Flux & Anchor

Rambling Down South...

2011-04-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

First, I'd like to apologize to all my friends who followed my musings over the last many months. I was embarrassed to realize that I haven't posted since January. Shame on me. We should never be too busy to spend a little time with our friends. Lo siento mucho...

Many of you know that I am now spending a lot of time down in Mexico. We are still doing a lot of preliminary work on getting our northern Baja project up and running, and my last couple of trips down have involved a lot of running around the peninsula, going places that I've never been, meeting new people (some friends, some not), and getting more immersed in this new culture.

Having just wended my way through the time change in the states, I had the opportunity to do it again just yesterday here in Mexico. When you throw in my sojourn a few weeks back through Arizona, land of the eternal mavericks, I guess it's understandable that I have no frigging idea what time it is. My body is telling me that if I'm going to keep screwing with it like this, I'm gonna have to let it set the clock and I'm the one that will need to adjust accordingly. So far, so good. Can't much fight mother nature, and she manifest herself most directly through our internal clocks, metabolism, etc. She's also telling me I need to work on my abs, but that's another story...

So, last night as we were driving up to Los Barriles for dinner, I had the unique experience of almost running down a wild burro on the road. Yes, seriously. He wandered right out in front of us, stopped, looked me square in the eye, as if saying, "Come on, gringo, I dare you." If he'd known how sketchy the brakes were in the truck I was driving he might not have been quite so ballsy. As it was, I really though I was goin to bump him before I brought it to a complete halt, but I never felt a thump and he grinned over his shoulder as he sauntered off into the brush. I told my partner that I'd seen dozens of signs all over these parts warning about cattle in the road, but hadn't seen a single head actually on any of the "major" thoroughfares I've driven, although they of course wander up and down the dirt roads in the periphery of the villages like they own the place. He couldn't explain why there were no "Watch out for wild burros" signs...

So one of my joys of being here is walking the beaches, collecting shells and rocks from the sea, and just communing with nature. Tonight, as every night, the stars are brilliant and breathtaking, and it would be easy to get lost staring up at them while listening to the waves slapping rhythmically onto the shoreline. I can't make that a habit, or I'm likely to forget that I'm here primarily for work. I fear serenity might be terribly addictive...

A few thoughts that have come to me in the past few days as I take my morning strolls on the beach? Well, sure...

One is that walking on the beach for a relative novice is at the outset a scientific experiment. Mind you, my walks tend to be several miles, and walking on wet sand soon makes you keenly aware of things you wouldn't ever have cause to consider walking down a hardpack trail or along city sidewalks. You need to learn which levels of sand will bear your weight, and which will give way and leave you mired ankle deep. You need to learn what footwear, if any, is appropriate. Beach sand, like unwelcome houseguests, arrives unexpectedly and doesn't leave readily. And it's highly abrasive. If surf socks (which are great for swimming and surfing)kept the sand out to begin with, they would be ideal. Unfortunately, they let it in more slowly but NEVER give it up. Flip flops, which the natives like to wear, don't trap sand. However, they do an incredible job of flipping sand up the back of your calves with each and every step, have the attachment piece between the big and second toe which I find terribly annoying, and don't allow for a very efficient stride. In the end, bare feet are likely the best, and if you're blessed with wide feet, as we would all likely have if we'd not started binding them in shoes centuries ago, there is no question. Because in the end, when you or I, being 70 percent water, walk along the shoreline of a sea or ocean from which our ancient ancestors first emerged, we are comingled as nearly as we can be with our planet, which is amazingly, seventy percent water. Crazy, huh?

On a related but slightly different note, it occurred to me this morning, for perhaps the first time in my life, while walking along one of the most pristine shorelines in North America, that I was walking along water which was joined with every other great body of water on the planet. I gazed out at an opportune moment to spot the giant back of a whale emerging from the depths - a whale which likely had swum many of the great oceans of the earth. I shared this tale and realization with my wife this evening - that if I were inclined I could just keep walking - south to Cabo, then northward up the coast to California (the American one), on to Oregon, Washington, and all the way up to Alaska, where later ancestors (than those which first crawled up on land) wandered across the land bridge to what is now called Russia. Thoughts such as these are really not hard to come by when you're wandering alone on a ogrgeous stretch of beach - not a sign of civilization anywhere (if you ignore the tire tracks in the sand...)

Did I mention that before I headed out three young Mexicans drove down to the beach, one emerging from the truck, wandering down to a rocky parch on the shoreline, only to emerge mere moment later carrying a very attractive lobster? Even crazier, huh?

And yesterday I had a visit with a couple of German tourist ladies lounging under a palapa in front of a seaside hotel near town. One, a retired Lufthansa flight attendant, said that she wasn't much taken with this piece of Mexico - that it was too hot and dry and there was no culture - nothing to do. I just shook my head as I walked away. Nothing to do? How crazy is that? She could always go for a walk on the beach. Barefoot...

Metaphor

2011-01-30T09:48:00.000-08:00

I'm always taken aback when literary critics describe a long-ago work as a metaphor for this or that, when there is no evidence that the author intended it as such. On the other hand, I appreciate the fact that readers have the right to extrapolate whatever metaphor they might like from any work, or any experience, for that matter. I am myself a great fan of metaphors, and love seeking them out in everyday life.

As many of you know, I recently completed my first 100-mile bike ride, a fairly grueling accomplishment for a 53 year old, and one of which I am pretty proud. As my childhood hero Clint Eastwood, aka Harry Callahan, said in the 1973 classic, Magnum Force, "A man needs to know his limitations." As one who believes knowledge can only come through direct experience, one must do to know. I now know that my cycling limitation, on a 70 degree day with light winds on a semi-hilly course with adequate nutrition and hydration and a reliable lightweight road bike, is something above 100 miles. No, that's not a metaphor, just an empirical deduction extrapolated from direct experience...

Nonetheless, when one spends more than six hours in the saddle riding solo through the countryside, it is almost inevitable that one will experience a metaphor or two in the process. Following, then, are a few that occurred to me during this ride...

In life, we will find ourselves facing stiff headwinds at times, and favorable tailwinds at others, likewise with ascents and descents of varying intensity. What I've come to realize in my year or so of semi-serious cycling, only reinforced during this first century ride, metaphorically speaking, is that these are to be recognized for what they are, neither blessing nor curse - simply conditions. There is no point in lamenting those which are unfavorable, nor extravagantly celebrating the favorable - both will change as you just keep pedaling. And we have little choice but to keep pedaling, unless we choose to quit. I don't...

At the same time and for the same reason, I find it counterproductive to ignore the blessings which come our way. I know that there are many who will coast when they find themselves on a downhill or with a favorable tailwind. My modus operandi, on the other hand, is to continue to push, even under the most favorable of conditions. Why? Because, as mentioned earlier, conditions will change. By taking maximum advantage of favorable conditions when they exist, we place ourselves in a superior position for the time in which less favorable conditions present themselves. I believe that in the six and a half hours or so during which I was actually riding, I probably coasted for no more than three minutes. With no evidence to the contrary, I choose to believe this was a winning strategy for me.

It didn't hurt that I knew there was a definite end to this trek, which somewhat mitigates it as a metaphor for life, which we know will have an end, but with not an inking of when or where it might come...

A second metaphor was the concrete realization that stopping on an uphill is a very bad idea, regardless of the circumstance. A friend came out to meet me around the 40 mile mark, and when he spotted me he thoughtfully drove on to the next downhill, not wanting to stop me in the middle of a climb. That is a true sign of friendship! I think too often even well-meaning friends, inspired by compassion, might encourage us to take a break while in the midst of confronting some life challenge. The reality is that, once the break is over, the challenge remains to be overcome, getting started once stopped can be increasingly difficult, and for many of us it can prove impossible. In cycling, we call this "bonking," the ultimate failure. Thanks, Michael, for not bonking me...

A third metaphor surrounds the advisability of planning and preparation. Uncharacteristically for me, I actually went out and drove the course the day before. A friend had thoughtfully mapped it out for me, and while I trusted his judgment, it was totally unfamiliar territory for me, and I wanted to know in advance what I would be facing. Sometimes we have this luxury in life, although less often than we would like. As a result of having the opportunity, I was even more inclined than I might have been to get a good night's rest, get myself well hydrated, get all the calories and carbohydrates on board that I could manage, and to dress appropriately and flexibly. There is no question I could have planned and prepared more, and will for the next, but having done what I did I was able to achieve my objective, and in so doing will be better prepared to tackle the next similar challenge.

To torture this metaphor a bit, I have launched myself over the last several years on a spiritual trek which, unlike my little cycling adventure, has no clear road map, too many condition variables to enumerate, and definitely no clear end point. One of the earliest books on Buddhism I read suggested strongly that it was best to follow the well trod path others had charted before us. This advice I've left largely unheeded. Why? Because I am not at all certain I want to go where others have. I want to know how and where they've gone, because I want to be able to recognize it when I cross their paths, knowing that if I am indeed lost I can simply turn in their direction and get to a safe place.

Like most seekers, I am hard pressed to say when exactly my search began, and know that it has never been one with a fixed destination. Unlike traveling in the physical world with a fixed destination and schedule in mind, the spiritual journey, for me at least, is one in which the journey is in fact the objective - seeing all we can see, learning all we can learn, experiencing all we can experience, and hopefully growing all the while. While I suppose one could apply the same free-spirited approach to a terrestrial cycling adventure, I suspect that at some point one would have a fair chance of winding up bleached bones in a riverbed next to a rusting steed missing its rider. Not a terrible way to go, I guess, as long as there was a nice dose of blunt force trauma to ease you on your way...

Yet another observation which I suppose is somewhat metaphorical, is that of the lone rider. I did throw out a weak invitation for company, but wasn't heartbroken when nobody took me up on it. As it was the most beautiful day in months - a rare gem of an opportunity at the end of January, even in Texas, I relished the chance to challenge myself without the added pressure of pushing or pulling or being pushed or pulled. Truth is, I'm more than a bit of a loner for a lot of reasons we shan't touch upon here. I recognize it as something of a character defect, and am working on it, but it is a reality which cycling seems to reinforce. Interestingly, I'd done a short 25-mile memorial ride for a fallen comrade just the night before - the first time in my life I'd ridden with an organized group working as something of a team. There were certain aspects of it I found quite enjoyable - the teamwork, the drafting, the camaraderie. At other points, though, I was chomping at the bit to hit my own pace, which would have likely been middle of this particular pack. Truth is, I took up cycling for fitness, tend to shut the brain down or at least let it free-wheel, and let my body set the pace. No, mindfulness is probably not an apt description of me at these junctures...

In my hodge-podge personal concoction of mostly eastern philosophy, non-duality and impermanence are probably the top two components. In brief explanation, this is to say that each of us is part of a larger whole, and a larger whole still, with no meaningful line of demarcation between the individual and the universe at large. At the same time, while there is no meaningful "self," the only thing over which we have even a modicum of control is the self. Riding alone through virtually uninhabited countryside, particularly in conditions where there are no extreme conditional challenges, is one of life's experiences, like drifting silently in a canoe down a lazy river or sailing on a pleasant day on a favorable tack or hiking peacefully through a quiet forest or along a high mountain trail, when every aspect of existence from the most central core of individual self-consciousness to the infinite beyond the observable meld into an indescribable unified whole, and you feel like you are part of everything and everything is part of you. And then you suddenly realize just how badly your ass actually hurts...

Truthfully, though, I can only see this experience being enhanced by company if the company is with an individual or group with which you are so in synchronization that its presence only adds and doesn't subtract or distract in the slightest. Something to aspire to, I suppose, but we shan't allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good...

Finally, this journey, like all journeys in life, began with the first downward press on the pedal, the first roll of the wheel. Could as easily have been the first step of a marathon or a cross-country hike. Roads are to be ridden, trails to be hiked, life to be lived. There is a time for contemplation and meditation, a vital past-time to which I need to devote more time and less effort. But to the degree that I intend to live life fully and completely, I will strive to remember to accept life on life's terms, to be grateful for blessings, to persevere against hardships. Perhaps some day I'll learn to be a better friend, companion, and team-mate. Until then, I'll do my best to not get in your way or run over you, and to appreciate your giving me a wide berth as you pass by me, pedaling and daydreaming on a back country road...

As a humorous aside, I noted that my random play IPod was playing a Maria Callas aria as I spun south out of Graham, Texas, a sleepy little burg northwest of Mineral Wells. It was perhaps a juxtaposition that needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated. A short while later I rolled up on a convocation between a flock of turkey vultures on one side of the fence and a herd of cows on the other. The birds flew in one direction while the cows bolted in the other as I approached at moderate speed in my admittedly garish cycling outfit. Out of some 2,000 titles ranging from show tunes and Christmas carols to acid rock, "Gone Country" by Alan Jackson was playing. Yes, I laughed out loud as I rode by...

New Year, New Thoughts...

2011-01-15T18:37:00.001-08:00

Yes, I've been away for a while - apologies. Like everyone else, got busy with the holidays, working my way through the career transition, and in the last several weeks dealing with the health issues of aging parental units. Things are moving along tolerably on all fronts, and I've been appropriately chastised by a few friends for falling down on my blogging, so here goes...

I will start by stating that I am in a much different place this January than I was last. I just reread my first post of 2010, and realize just how far from that place I've come. I am still not meditating, which disturbs me a little, but am in pretty much all other ways much more settled in my mental and spiritual outlook. I am in mid-transition career wise, and not a transition I ever would have imagined a year ago. I am going to be developing a piece of real estate on the Sea of Cortez in Baja Mexico for an old client - traveling back and forth with some regularity, relearning Spanish and utilizing it on a regular basis for the first time in my life. At the same time, I will be able to keep a toe in the recruiting game, handling special projects for my better clients as time and circumstances allow. So, from a career standpoint, a whole lot of new and a little bit of old. Yes, I'm pretty excited.

On the health and fitness front I have taken up cycling with something of a vengeance, continue to work out regularly and eat moderately well. I am about to add swimming to my repertoire, as I don't get enough cardio work in my routine and want to be able to go for long ocean swims without endangering myself. I am probably in the best physical shape of my adult life, which speaks less of the great place I'm in now than about the sorry state I allowed myself to fall into during my earlier working years. I am probably too much like most Americans in this respect, am glad I figured it out early enough to do something about it, and encourage any of you who are feeling a bit weary and listless and out of sorts to strongly consider adding a major dose of exercise to your regimen. I can tell you first-hand that it will improve all aspects of your life. But remember, moderation in all things...

On the recovery front, I still attend AA on my regular schedule. I'll be honest in saying I've not made significant progress in the program this year. It's true, you know, that you only get out of something what you put into it, and I've not really worked it very hard this year. I've stayed sober, which is the main objective, made and strengthened some friendships within the two groups I meet with, and am more comfortable every day admitting to myself and to others that I'm an alcoholic, can't drink like "normal" people, and will never be able to. And I'm actually pretty happy about that. I spent a lot of my life drinking like normal people and on occasion like really abnormal people. Too much of those decades is a blur, and a lot of it wasn't pretty. Not really a big sacrifice to let it go. AA is not a program with an ending - its something you keep doing if you really have the problem and you really want to beat it. So, I'm not beating myself up over not having made any great strides on this front last year. I've got another thirty or forty years to work on it, and its not like there's a finish line...

On that note, one of the things I've noticed about myself this past year is that I've really developed a good deal patience, a notion that I now realize was sorely lacking previously. I've developed patience with myself, patience with others, even patience with our screwed up political system. This isn't the same as apathy, mind you. I still care about a lot of things, and care deeply. But I also have come to recognize that I can't save the world from itself, I can't change others, and I can't change the past or even the present. I can only change the future, and for the most part even then, only for myself, in a very limited way, with the decisions I make and actions I take. That's a pretty finite target on which to focus. I reckon that's what we mean when we say, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change..." It's a simple, yet liberating, realization.

I suppose the biggest change has been in my marriage, which is in a far better place than it was a year ago. We went through some very dark times last spring and summer - when my wife and I both had to come to grips with what an asshole I'd been, along with other major challenges in our relationship. We were at that place too many marriages come to, and which as often as not wind up in divorce. Instead of becoming another grim statistic, we both sought individual counseling and later couples counseling, and developed a level of trust, respect, and open communication that never really existed in our almost three decades together. I don't know if its ever safe to say you're out of the woods, but I think it is safe to say that the forest umbrella is thinning significantly, we see more sunshine and blue sky than shadows these days, and we're holding hands on our journey. Its a good feeling, and one I don't want to lose again.

I'm sorry to disappoint you - know you were hoping upon my belated return for some political zealotry or religious controversy, hellfire and brimstone and whatnot. Not going to happen. I will reveal that I'm communicating with some friends on the inside to see if we can't arrange a rousing welcome party for Mr. Delay, but that's another story for another day...

A Little Bit Crazy...

2010-11-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

Yep, have been away a while. Sorry. Life sometimes gets in the way of blogging. We deal with it. Last time I posted I was trying to get caught up at work in anticipation of a little early October jaunt to Mexico. Life has gotten plenty interesting since my return. How interesting? Nice of you to ask...

Now that the government has posted a travel advisory for U.S. citizens considering trips to Mexico, it only makes sense that I'd develop a hankering to go. In my visit last month, I enjoyed running the roads with gangsters and Federales, I've decided to make it a long term project. Really? Well, no, not really. Well, sort of. Hmmmm...

Okay, so here's the deal. I've been sitting behind a desk hunting heads with a fair amount of success for more than four years now. Prior to this, I've never sat in one place or worked for any employer other than myself for more than two years. Ever.Well, okay, I carried a weapon for Uncle Sam for three years, but we weren't sitting still in one place, believe me. So, yeah, maybe I'm a little bit stir crazy, but coping. Ya know? Then, a couple of months ago, my cell phone begins vibrating one morning...

"Hey, what are you up to these days?" greets my former client. "Still headhunting," says me. "How's that going?" says he. "Okay," says me. "Interested in looking at a project in Mexico for me?" he asks. "Tell me a little bit about it..."

So I bounced it around with the spouse, dickered terms with the client, spent a week down getting the lay of the land, determining viability, communing with my friend the sea, and convincing myself it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. Didn't take a lot of convincing...

So, today was my last day as a full time headhunter. I told the bosses I'd stay on a "as time allows" straight commission basis to wrap up a few projects ongoing and help train my replacement, if they can find one. Meanwhile, I'm going full immersion into the Rosetta Stone, boning up on Mexican land law, water law, formalized graft system, political undercurrents, etc. Dealing with title companies, engineers, surveyors, Mexican government officials, lawyers, shysters and con men. Will be developing an off-the grid seaside community along one of the most beautiful beach fronts in the world, playing daily in the body of water Jacques Cousteau deemed "the world's aquarium." Am I pumped? Really? Oh, yeah...

This is going to be about as big a lifestyle transition as I've ever encountered - going from the predictable structured 5:30 to the gym, 9-6 work day, AA meetings on Friday evening and Saturday morning, Sunday bike ride... to setting my own schedule, traveling incessantly, intensive periods of 18 hour workdays followed by leisurely weeks off, finding an AA group in San Felipe (just looked it up - its there) and connecting with a whole new group of friends in recovery. Comfort zone? What comfort zone? Yikes!

But really, yes, I am pumped. And not least because this is the first one of my hair-brained adventures that I've actually cleared in advance with my family. Did I forget to mention I can be an asshole? Oh, sorry about that. Innocent slip...

But yes, the family is excited, too. We've all begun earnestly planning our escape from the increasingly rancid atmosphere of red state Texas, and perhaps Los Estados Unidos as well, as our native country does seem to be taking an ugly turn that might really be more unpleasant than we care to face at this point in our lives. Worst case scenario, we wind up fully transplanted to a seaside oasis where the sun greets us from across a sparkling sea each morning and bids us farewell in the evenings as it slips away over the adjacent purpling mountains. Best case, America doesn't fall apart, and we split time between some civilized state like Colorado during the blistering summer months, and winter at our Mexican getaway.

And in either case, I come away fluent in the Spanish language, expert in navigating the Mexican bureaucratic process, fully conversant in a culture I've lived alongside my entire life without sharing so much of its beauty, and newly versed in foreign building and living practices alien to the average American. And I'll have a whole new slew of friends with whom to fight the pull of the jugo del agave...

Bienvenido a mi vida loca!

Three Squares and a Cot

2010-09-25T14:37:00.000-07:00

So, for some reason I pulled The Life of Pi off the bookshelf last night and started rereading it. For most people, there would be nothing strange in that. For me, though, it’s more than a little weird. You see, I was raised in a reading household. My father, the electronic engineering wizard who could build a short-wave radio out of a Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco can, a coat hanger and a few pennies, didn’t have much use for television. Ours gave out during JFK’s funeral procession, and I think we got our next one sometime around Watergate. Dad could have fixed it – repaired others’ sets and our hi-fi and all sorts of gizmos with vacuum tubes, capacitors, resistors and whatnot – but not our television.

So we read. A lot. And I’ve never knowingly read the same book twice, with the possible exception of To Kill a Mockingbird. So my voluntarily picking up The Life of Pi is actually significant. I think. Maybe…

No, I’m not going to do a review for you here. If you can read this blog then you can get yourself over to a library or the discount book store or Amazon or wherever you get your reading materials, buy the darn thing and read it yourself. And I strongly recommend you do. I digress…

So, I’m sitting on the throne meditating this morning (figures of speech both) and reading my book, when I ran across an early passage I didn’t recall from my last go round, which was admittedly several years ago. Did I mention that I pretty much remember in a very hazy way virtually every book I’ve ever read? Well, I do. I never remember the author or the title, but if I inadvertently pick up a previously read tome – within a couple of pages I will remember not only that I read it, but generally about when, and the whole story line. I have always been that way and sometimes find it a little disconcerting. It’s funny, actually, because I am one of the most forgetful people you’d ever want to meet, and yet I seem unable to fully forget anything I’ve ever read. The wife reminds me when I pick up something I’ve already read, because she knows I value efficiency, and that I’ll be back up out of bed and returning it to the bookshelf within five minutes once I’m made the discovery myself. Crazy, huh?

Dammit, I digressed again. Sorry…

Anyhow, Pi, the main human character in the story, was the son of a zoo keeper, and he delivers a pretty thought provoking exposition on the lives of animals in the wild and in captivity, and ties it back to humans just a bit, leaving me, the reader, to carry the thought a step farther. His contention is that modern zoo critics, PETA and others, are all wrong about zoos, animal happiness, and so forth. He suggests that wild animals need, rather than want, a certain amount of territory, because it takes that much territory to provide sustenance and security. I’m not a wildlife expert by any stretch, but it makes sense to me. For instance, jungles are teaming with wildlife in great concentration, precisely because there is an abundance of food and water, the relative security that comes with adequate cover, and the unit strength achieved when a troop or pack or gaggle or whatever is sufficient in number and cohesion to create a certain acceptable level of security. As the habitat dwindles, food sources thin, and water becomes more scarce, more territory is required to fulfill these needs. At some point the sustenance becomes insufficient to allow further expansion, so the group’s size is thereby limited. Likewise, if populations grow too large and food becomes too scarce, infant mortality rises. Too much inbreeding? Ditto. Is nature cool, or what?

His point is that the individual animal, given adequate room and a comfortable environment, adequate interaction with members of its species, and ample food and water, is likely happier in a zoo than in the wild because the security concern is largely absent. As an example, he cites numerous cases of animals escaping from, and then voluntarily returning to, various zoos throughout the world and history, due to the less stressful life there. No, I’m not going to argue with you. Sounds plausible and made me think, and that’s enough for me…

So then I started extrapolating from that brief passage what, if anything, might this say about humanity and our condition and behavior. And here’s what I came up with. Modern industrialized westernized humans are like animals in a zoo. We have given up our freedom and our connection with nature in exchange for the security of the civilized common. And all of this being relatively new in evolutionary terms, some of us take to this transition better than others. I, for one, hanker for something decidedly more primitive, largely because I’ve not yet had my fill of it – barely a teaspoon if truth be told. Whenever I get in the mountains or near the ocean or next to a babbling brook - far away from anything attesting to the presence of a single other human, I feel myself sucked into it like an iron filing to a magnet. And I can’t get in deep enough and I can’t stay long enough. The same circumstance will drive other moderns to sheer panic, a trembling fear which can only be settled by the rumble of engines, the smell of diesel, the glow of street lights, the reassuring snick of a door latch catching, or the road hiss of a nearby highway.

I’m afraid I am not the zoo animal that would turn and head back to the cage, but more the fool raised in captivity who would charge off into the wilderness, never looking back. And I would no doubt be taken on my first night by a hungry animal. And I think I might be happier in my departure than I was in my previous condition. And my killer would settle in under a rocky overhang, dozing peacefully with a full stomach, and dreaming about what exactly he needs to do to be accepted into the comfortably easy life of the zoo creatures…

In Memoriam…

2010-09-11T17:10:00.000-07:00

Today is September 11th, the ninth anniversary of the heinous coordinated attacks on innocent Americans by radical religious fundamentalists. Like many, if not most, Americans, I am a bit more cognizant this year, owing primarily to the New York mosque controversy, and the idiotic and dangerous Quran burning threats of a megalomaniac Florida pastor.

I find myself mourning anew the loss of thousands of innocent lives of workers in the twin towers, of passengers who died the field in Pennsylvania, of the unsuspecting civilian and military personnel working in the Pentagon that fateful morning, and of so many brave rescuers who headed into instead of away from the conflagrations to assist their fallen brothers and sisters. I do make a distinction between victims and heroes, for while all were victims directly and indirectly, the real heroes were the fighting passengers on flight 93, the rescuers who charged into the infernos, and the tens of thousands of brave men and women who volunteered and who continue to volunteer to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation against an ongoing attack by a small but determined group of radicalized Muslims bent on spreading their religion by violent means.

I think what I mourn most deeply though, is the opportunity that was lost following those first days and months following the attacks, when then President Bush rallied the nation together, bolstered our spirits and soothed our troubled hearts, and held in his hand an opportunity to bind our wounds and unify Americans, and to unite America with the rest of the world. We had been knocked down off our high horse in a most traumatic fashion, which created a unique opportunity to join together with current allies and previous foes to form common cause against global terrorism, to recognize and seize upon our common interests, and to move the country and the world forward in a positive direction. At an early moment there, George W. Bush had the opportunity to go down in history as one of the greatest American Presidents.

He started out well enough, vowing to identify the culprits and make them pay for their deed, and take action to ensure that we would not fall prey to such actions again. He focused rightly on Afghanistan, a failed state which offered safe harbor to Bin Laden and his followers, and began marshaling forces and a plan to deal with our attackers. But then, before we’d even launched our action in that squalid land, he squandered his opportunity horribly…

We now know that the dust and debris from the attack hadn’t yet been cleared when plans began being laid in earnest to attack Iraq, a country that the administration knew had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. As a result, the Afghanistan effort was shoddily planned and woefully under-resourced, ensuring its failure from the outset and, as a consequence, squandering the lives of more than 2,000 coalition troops so far up to the time of this writing. While our allies willingly joined us in pursuing this initial justified effort, they were being simultaneously strong-armed into pledging participation toward the Iraq invasion. In the months following our successful invasion of Afghanistan, routing of the Taliban, and predictable failure to capture or kill Bin Laden and the Al Quaeda leadership, the actions of the Bush administration began sowing rifts not only between the U.S. and Muslim nations, but between us and our non-Muslim allies as well. Less than a year and a half after the 9/11 attacks we invaded a sovereign nation without legal justification, leading a bogus international coalition strong-armed together to create a flimsy masquerade of an international effort, and as a consequence severely damaging our standing in the community of nations and splitting our own nation asunder in ways unseen since the outset of the civil war.

Instead of accepting the global outpouring of compassion and brotherhood that resulted from this dastardly and globally excoriated attack, and using the opportunity to motivate our people united in shock and mourning toward some positive end, Bush and his cohort climbed back up on the pedestal, brushed aside calls for measure and reason, swelled out their collective chest, waved the sword and bellowed out in anger and fury. They wielded our financial, military and political strength to bend the situation in their ill-conceived direction, and started a religious war that shows no sign of abating – quite the opposite. Instead of taking advantage of our unrivaled strength to lead a willing global coalition toward alleviating a great evil, they chose instead to add to it with their own criminal behavior. Instead of taking this opportunity to unite the nation toward some positive end and a brighter future, we found ourselves embroiled in increasingly violent rhetoric and political chicanery. And all the while, our brave men and women were spilling their precious blood in vain, and do so to this day.

All the while, Americans were coerced into giving up their civil liberties to an increasingly paranoid police state. Political operatives maligned ordinary citizens who were non-compliant with their outlandish plans. Rules were bent, broken and disregarded in the name of “national security,” while the actual security concerns at our borders and ports were ignored and deprived of resources which were instead being fed into an ill conceived conflict. A true national nightmare…

Conservatives and self-proclaimed “patriots” prod us with their flags and T-shirts and bumper stickers to “Never Forget.” None of us will ever forget. Not where we were. Not what we felt. Not how we huddled with our families and friends in shock and pain and suffering…

And I, for one, will never forget that this opportunity for healing and progress both at home and abroad, purchased at such a horrible price of pain and suffering and death which continues to be levied to this very moment, was squandered. I will wonder what those innocent souls of both victims and heroes whose lives were unjustly and violently taken would say about how their deaths were used to justify all the moral failures and violent deaths that have followed as a result. And I will wonder how long our nation will have to pay for President Bush’s terrible failure of leadership.

And I will mourn…

What If…?

2010-09-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

I might have mentioned at some time in the past that I have a frighteningly intelligent son. He is now 22, graduated from college and gainfully employed. And for the first time in a very long while we are having some pretty intensive intellectual discussions on topics large and small. Very gratifying, to me at least…

I noted in the course of one such exchange recently that he shows exactly the same fealty to his faith in science, as it exists currently, that the religious believers he so disdains hold toward their interpretation of God and their particular scriptures, traditions, practices, and so forth. Did I mention that he is an atheist? No? Sorry. Yes, he is one of those dogmatically certain atheists that I have a hard time elevating to a status too far above the dogmatically certain Christians or Muslims or Jews. Ok, I admit that I know no dogmatically certain Jews – perhaps being “God’s chosen people” eliminates the need for dogmatic certainty. In fact, I have developed something of a deep appreciation for Judaism, based on my interaction with many in that community. They seem quite comfortable in their uncertainty, which I find very refreshing.

I digress…

So, with my boy and I now having re-found the ability to engage in intellectual sparring sessions, I asked him to consider the possibility that science, as it exists currently, is limited to only being able to explain within its capabilities the material universe, and that these abilities might be both limited and limiting. I suggested that the total universe might be infinite, and might be comprised of many non-material aspects of which we have no awareness, nor means of comprehending. I further suggested that there might be points of interface between these hypothetical planes of existence, at which points the material world might not behave exactly as science currently believes the material world to behave. Finally, I suggested that science’s belief that the material universe is finite might in fact be nothing more than science’s finite ability currently to observe – that the universe’s purported limits might in fact only be our own.

Now I know how Galileo felt…

The genesis of this line of discussion came when I found myself pondering exactly how much we have progressed since the dawn of man. I have long and often stated that we have progressed very little, that we still focus primarily on survival and advantage, and that despite our recent advances in science, communications, travel and transport and the manipulation of so many aspects of the material universe, we seem to have no end purpose as a species. We have certainly made our lives more complex, and it has admittedly been in the course of this self-serving hubristic paean to ourselves that we’ve developed the technological capabilities that make our world today such a wonder.

So what?

We still struggle to put food on the table, shelter over our heads, and to gather certain bits of material wealth to make our lives or the lives of our children theoretically easier. We live a more complex version of the life our forbearers lived while still in caves, in other words.

Have we developed a common mission? Do we, as a species, have a communal objective? Have we a plan to somehow make our lives meaningful purposeful in any real sense? I think not. My friends the religionists see no need – they await the rapture in which they will transcend this physical realm and ascend to something bigger and better and more rewarding, and they arrogantly assume that this rapture will come in their lifetimes and in this particular corner of space.

My son the science worshiper is no better – readily admitting that in his theology there’s no reward in store in the end – that mankind will simply stay tethered to this spinning blue orb or at most this solar system until the sun goes to supernova and fries away all sustenance for life, and life itself. I personally don’t see one improvable mythology being particularly superior to the other.

But, what if there is potentially a third path? What if “God” really does have a plan, and that plan is survival. Without us getting all hung up on the unanswerable questions of whether God is or isn’t, or God’s nature or will, for the sake of conversation let’s make the allowance. There is ample evidence that nature reveres survival above all else – it is the strongest of instincts, and the imperative for evolutionary progress. As my boy put it in the course of our discourse, “the extension of life.” Disdainfully it was said, I might add. This brilliant lad, who chooses to ignore anything for which there is no evidence, seemingly refuses to ignore the most glaring evidence of all – namely, that nature reveres survival above all else.

“So what?” you ask?

So, what is the greatest inarguable and certain impediment to mankind’s survival? How about the fact that we are firmly tethered to a planet and a solar system moving inexorably toward certain destruction? Assume that we somehow dodge the asteroids that are sure to pound the planet over the eons. Assume, as I don’t, that we will manage to not immolate ourselves in some nuclear conflagration. Assume that we will avoid unleashing a plague on our species, or poisoning our atmosphere and environment beyond the point where it can sustain life, or that we will somehow get over our love of wars fought over man-made religious differences and the distribution of wealth. Assume all these things, if you like. But recognize that these unlikely accomplishments and avoidances will not change the physics of the observable material universe, and that our solar system will become in time uninhabitable by life as we know it.

These are all known impending realities. What are we doing about them?

We’re celebrating Lady Gaga and the latest in techno entertainment. We’re working to figure out how to squeeze a few extra MPG out of our planes and trains and automobiles. We’re manipulating currencies and starting wars and developing new technologies and products and practices to bend the material world we live in to our will, in a micro sense, to make our lives a little more comfortable, a bit more entertaining. Oh yes, and breeding like rabbits, as if there’s something positive in that. All the while we’re ignoring the stark reality that we’re busily remodeling and decorating an increasingly crowded residence assured of fiery destruction, and not even considering what our next stop might be, or if there might be one.

So, what should we be doing instead? How about focusing on getting off this doomed orb and out of this doomed solar system as expeditiously as possible? Now that would be a project, no? Am I suggesting that we stop trying to ease our suffering, improve our health, increase our efficiency, transform our energy models? No, of course not – these are part and parcel of survival in the shorter term. But as long as the rationale is short term and immediately self-serving, we will never achieve the greater possibilities.

What are the avoidable impediments to mankind’s survival beyond that of the earth or the solar system? I will name the first few that come to mind:

No sense of urgency – there are in fact scientists who sound the alarm regularly about the likelihood of our encountering a cataclysmic hurtling object of some sort which could set civilization as we know it back to at least the dawn of the industrial age, or perhaps annihilate us altogether. And it could happen at any time. And, as mentioned before, the lights will eventually go out of their own accord, and there is nothing we can do to change that reality.

Religion – the proselytizing religions (all in the Abrahamic tradition, interestingly) seem stubbornly unwilling to concede that they cannot prove their claims in this realm, and instead insist on marshaling armies and exhausting resources to defend and spread their beliefs in hopes that non-believers will somehow validate their own fealty to the unknowable. That this has been going on for millennia supports my contention that we’ve made little real progress since man first stood upright and figured out how to control fire.

Nationalism – petty peoples both advanced and primitive continue to expend tremendous energy and limited resources defending lines drawn on the surface of the planet by men with apparently nothing better to do, creating a basis for conflict and angst which is totally self-made. The demise of princedoms and the evolution of the nation-state is one of the societal developments which allowed for the rise of industrialism and the rather impressive advances in science and technology of the last several centuries. But our retention of the model which is now aging and causative of more negative than positive is a pronounced impediment to mankind’s continued progress.

Economics – over the centuries certain models of wealth distribution, currency exchange and trade have arisen and been refined, which again have served a valuable purpose for mankind up to this point. It is increasingly clear, however, that the competitive nature of the models which have gained ascendency now act more to retard than to facilitate human progress. There are those who laud the competitive aspects of western style capitalism as the engine of efficiency leading to technological progress, and this point I won’t argue. I will argue, however, that other motivations, such as survival of the species, could serve equally well, if man could only find a way to step beyond the artificial distinctions of race, religion, nationality, and so forth. In the end, everything that was, is or ever will be is already provided by God or the universe or whatever you wish to title the supreme force, and by perpetuating systems designed to marshal and horde these gifts to a select subset of humanity, we waste precious time and opportunity to progress and survive as a species.

Science – there are too many among us, my dear brilliant son included, who treat science as a religion, the laws of physics as their scripture, the currently provable as their theology to not be trifled with. I know there are many scientists and supporters, however, who hold a more expansive view, who appreciate the accomplishments of science to date, but who also recognize that what we know is limited to what we can at this mid-point in our development detect and measure, and who want to strive and stretch beyond the current self-imposed limitations of our understanding. It is these who would move our understanding and knowledge beyond the limitations of crass commercial viability and toward the possibility of mankind’s potentially limitless survival.

The religionists would argue that my approach is hubris, and that what I am proposing is a path to a modern day Tower of Babel. To these I would argue that it is hubris on their part to presume a knowledge of God’s will, and to assume that God intends us to rise and fall on this single wondrous blue ball we’ve been granted the honor of occupying for many eons now, a mere instant, however, in the infinite life of the infinite universe. What God/Nature has demonstrated inarguably is that its preference is toward our survival, and that, among all the species on this particular planet, man is the only one with the theoretical capability to extend our existence beyond the predictable lifetime of the planet and solar system on which and in which we came to be. Are we not compelled to do so?

In the end, the question comes down to this: Do I prefer for my progeny 1,000 generations hence to be the richest and most comfortable and best entertained humans on earth at the point the planet ceases to be able to sustain life? Or would I want them to be elsewhere, or to at least die trying?

For me, the answer is pretty simple…

Last Call…

2010-08-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

So, I was chastised earlier this week by a Facebook friend for posting too darn many political pieces on my wall. Lighten up, already, was her message. Then, while riding with a friend this glorious morning, he turned the conversation to politics, asking for my thoughts and insights on various maladies in today’s political arena. So there you have it. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who come from wildly varying perspectives – some of whom feel I’m way too political and some lamenting that I’m not nearly as politically active as in the past. The reality is that both perspectives are true, but my inclination is to side with the former.

My family and I have paid a high price for my political involvement over the years. It has cost me a company and a bankruptcy, put incredible strains on my marriage, deprived my children of the attention I should have been paying at critical junctures in their lives. The fact is that I involved myself with the best of intentions, accomplished a good deal at times that will have lasting effect, and don’t really regret as much as I probably should the sacrifice I willingly made. I do regret dragging them along on my crusade, and apologize to them for the steep price they’ve paid.

But enough is enough. While I expect to continue playing the political provocateur on Facebook, this is entertainment for me. I am not a lighthearted fellow – am actually an emotional recluse and rather well known for my lack of humor. This is a condition I am doggedly working on remedying through counseling, study, meditation, and so forth, so if I find a harmless pastime that brings a little levity into my life, I hope my friends will be inclined to humor me. But I truly intend for this post to be the last politically oriented piece in this forum – am now off on another more personal path. So, as a going away present to those interested, a quick trek through my views on the current landscape of American politics…

Political Parties
My riding buddy asked why we can’t just do away with political parties entirely, and I for one would love it. Unfortunately, our Constitution protects freedom of association under the First Amendment, so the parties cannot be outlawed. Fact of the matter is that the parties can be and are heavily regulated, while individual citizens and unregistered groups are not regulated at all. I believe these are as much or more of a threat to our society than the parties at this point, particularly following the recent Citizens United v. FEC SCOTUS decision. I have no idea how it will all play out, but the situation doesn’t make me hopeful.

The Founders anticipated the formation of political parties, but they didn’t anticipate that these might assume the permanent nature now exhibited, nor the level of influence they would have across the entire spectrum of governmental activities. Unconfirmed executive branch officers, the incredible electoral/political influence on every single piece of legislation, the perpetual logjam in the legislative process – none of these would please any of the Federalists who saw the Constitution through ratification in 1789.

Of all the existing political parties, the one the Founders with their 1789 world view would most readily identify with is the Libertarians, whose sole focus is on limiting the scope of government to constitutionally enumerated activities. Before all the Libertarians and Tea Partiers out there get excited, please note my caveat regarding world view. We are no longer an isolated thirteen colonies of relatively homogeneous Englishmen on the eastern seaboard, comprised overwhelmingly of agricultural workers and land owners, with the merchant/industrialist class running a distant second and all others fractional participants. Neither are we slave holding plantation owners, which were the primary cause of the adherence to the Federal model which has proved as vexing as it has contributory to our national well being. Indeed, few are the Founders would take pride in what the nation has become in its sprawling urbanism, internationalism, multi-culturalism, economic complexity, and crass materialism. And while they would lament what we’ve become, once they understood the true nature of modern America, they wouldn’t advocate for a return to a political philosophy that has been outmoded for at least a century…

The problem with the Democrats is that they have lost touch with the only thing that ever mattered – being the representatives of working Americans and true small businesses. The family farmer (dwindling though they may be), sole proprietors, tradesmen, butchers, bakers, candle-stick makers, common laborers and blue-collar workers – these were the lifeblood of the Democratic Party. These folks now feel for the most part that they have nobody representing their interests. An unfathomable portion have wandered hopefully to the Republicans, while most have found themselves abandoned in the mushy middle with no party and no seeming reason to participate in the political process. My personal view is that the party no longer really stands for anything definable as a result of trying to fit more factions into its political tent than any tent can hold. I don’t see a solution to this problem coming any time in the foreseeable future…

The Republicans, on the other hand, have their own can of worms to deal with. They are what they have always been – the party of the moneyed interests. Their message was originally much a libertarian one, buttressed with more than a hint of fascism. Historically, the American voter recognized that they weren’t rich, and at least since the New Deal, that government could in fact make a positive difference in their lives – realities that didn’t bode well with the masses for the Republican’s electoral chances. In their creativity and efficiency, and in response to LBJ’s brave but dangerous push for civil rights for African Americans, they have expanded their message to attract enough voters to win elections, but at a fearful price. They invited in social conservatives concerned with creating a religious utopia (for themselves), along with racists and isolationist xenophobes, and have managed to achieve political parity where none should rightfully exist. The result is that pragmatic moderates and centrists as well as liberals are fearful of the Republican vision, which is why they stand at record low approval ratings today. I also don’t see this dynamic easing anytime soon, and in fact expect it to worsen with the advent of the Tea Party activists, the alienation of Hispanics, the fastest growing minority in the nation, and an increasingly strident anger against all things not wealthy WASP.

Political Reform
So, recognizing that nobody wants any of them, it should be a simple thing to fix the system, right? Not so, unfortunately. Remember, the Founders didn’t anticipate permanent parties with unlimited power, so they didn’t see the need to protect us from such a development. In fact, they allowed each house of Congress to write its own rules, and they allowed the states to handle apportionment and redistricting. The result is that the two major parties have a solid lock on the entire governmental process, a bare majority in either house allows the dominant party to control the flow of legislation and a sizable minority to block it, and more than 90 percent of House districts (at both state and federal level) are gerrymandered to protect incumbent office holders and their parties from any effort to bring about change.

To make matters worse, the flow of money into the process – always debilitating, is now a full-blown metastasizing cancer, made worse, as mentioned above, by the Citizens United ruling which grants corporations legal personhood and the right to spend limitless amounts of money toward electing their preferred water carrier. And we, the voters, are stuck between a sizeable rock and very solid hard place, with no recourse to change outside of armed revolt. (See note)

But wait…

The American Voter
The vast majority of American voters, including those who vote as well as those who don’t, are intellectually lazy and dangerously incurious. While this is somewhat truer on the right than the left, in my view, it is most prevalent in the apathetic middle. We read less, think less, ask less and demand less of our officials than any generation in modern history, and this is a trend that is increasing at a disturbing rate. Talking head radio entertainers belittle vacuous Hollywood entertainers for their political utterances and activism, when the country would be best served if all of them were ignored. Our education system is collapsing at exactly the time when citizens need better than ever to understand history, economics, trade and tax and geopolitical realities and the policies and politics that affect them. The media is so moribund and compromised it scarcely warrants the Constitutional protection the Founders granted it as an indispensable necessity for national survival. And the entire planet is held hostage, in this country as elsewhere, by the incessant battle between two Dark Age religions that fitfully coexist with nuclear fission, quantum physics and the fully mapped human genome.

And herein lays the crux of our political problems. As I told my cycling buddy this morning, have said often before and will no doubt repeat in the future – we have exactly the government we deserve. We are, in the end, a republic, if we can hang onto it, as Franklin is reported to have said. Ill-informed voters, apathetic voters, irrational voters, and non-voters all bear responsibility for where we find ourselves today. It is our country and it is our political system and our trying to lay the blame anywhere but squarely at our own feet is a cowardly and disingenuous cop out.

Manifesto for Change
It was this realization, belated on my part, that I could not in fact do much to affect the well-being of the country which convinced me that I needed to focus more on myself and my family and my future, and less on trying to save America from itself. I will continue to educate myself on the issues and the candidates and races, to vote, to support in an individual way the candidates from whichever party I think are most likely to best serve the constituency I find myself part of at that point. Finances allowing, I might even still write a check from time to time. Just doing these simple things will put me in the top 10 percent of voters in this country, and that’s good enough for me.

Now, if I should get wind of a viable candidate or promising party committed to actually fixing things, I might come out of hibernation and get involved in a more active way. What would real change consist of?

1. Eliminate all private money from political campaigns
2. Eliminate legislator participation in the redistricting process
3. Provide equal ballot access to independents and third party candidates
4. Establish reasonable term limits

It would require all of these at a minimum, and either in whole all at once or in this particular order, for me to believe we might salvage this noble experiment we call America. Do I believe it could happen? Absolutely! Do I believe it will? Not a snowball’s chance in hell. Americans are too fat and too lazy, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon either…

C'est la vie!

Note - While the depictions above refer primarily to the federal picture, it is not substantially different in most places at the state level.

Riding With God

2010-08-15T19:40:00.000-07:00

So, I was riding my bike along the river as I do most Sunday mornings, sweating and pumping and daydreaming a little, I suppose, when, suddenly, a voice spoke to me very clearly. “Watch out for that chuckhole!” Instinctively I swerved, knowing that it didn’t matter to which side. If the voice had said “pothole,” I’d have likely panicked, but chuckholes are by definition pretty small. The danger was easily avoided. And so began today’s talk with God…

“Where are you?” I asked. “I am here,” God replied. “There has never been a time or a place that I could not so answer, to those capable of asking.”

Recognizing this as a unique opportunity, I decided to be bold. “I had a few things I’ve wanted to talk to you about. Do you have a little time to visit while I ride?” “Of course,” God replied. “I have all the time in the world.”

“Keep your eye on the path,” God said gently. “Oh, so you know I’ve been studying Taoism and Buddhism?” I asked. “Of course,” God replied. “There is nothing about you that I don’t know.” Suddenly I felt the surface change beneath my wheels as the ground suddenly transitioned with a bump from smooth pavement to rocks and grass. I snapped my focus back to my course, and realized I’d continued straight when the track turned. I wrestled my bike back onto the trail, worried that I’d broken the connection…

“Like I said,” God chuckled. “Keep your eye on the path. Your Buddhism calls it ‘Right mindfulness.’”

“Oh, thanks,” I answered. “I was afraid you’d left me.” “I never leave you,” God said. “I couldn’t if I wanted to. You are part of me, and I am all of you. How could I leave you?” Hmmm, food for thought, I thought to myself. “One would hope so,” God replied.

“Keep your eye on the path,” God repeated, as I nearly missed a monstrous dip in the roadway. “Or else park your bike and be still. You’re making me nervous.” “Really?” I asked. “No, of course not,” God laughed aloud. “I was pulling your leg. I don’t get nervous – that’s a human frailty and I don’t have such weaknesses.” “Oh,” I responded meekly.

“You’ve done walking meditation,” God said. “Think of this as riding meditation. Pay sufficient attention to your course, and the balance to our conversation, and ignore anything else that comes along.” “Do you think I can do that?” I asked. “You can do anything your mind and body will allow,” God replied. “This is well within your capabilities.” Woo hoo, God expressing confidence in me. Talk about a pick-me-up…

“So, tell me what you want to talk about,” God prompted. “Don’t you know?” I asked half jokingly, not considering at the time I might be putting myself in line for a smiting. “Of course I do,” God replied. “And don’t be a wise ass. You’re the one who formulated this exchange as a conversation, and I’m finding it interesting. If you don’t want to talk, just say the word. I’ve got plenty of other things I can be doing.” “No, no,” I pleaded. “I’m sorry for smarting off and I do want to talk, really I do.” “Ok, then,” God said. “Let’s talk.”

“Well, yesterday at my AA meeting the topic was faith and forgiveness,” I began. “I’ve gotten fairly good at forgiveness, I think, but have never been big on faith. I mean, to me it’s a weakness – nothing more than a combination of baseless belief and human will. Am I wrong?”

“Are we having this conversation?” God asked in an amused tone. “Well,” I stammered. “It certainly seems to me that we are. But it’s all in my head, really. Isn’t it?” “And what has that got to do with anything?” God asked. “Everything that you know and think you know or have seen or heard or experienced or ever will experience is in your head, now isn’t it?” “That’s where I process and save these events,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen, does it?” Of course not,” God laughed aloud. “The whole ‘realism’ versus ‘idealism’ argument, eh? I find it quite amusing. I mean, not that it is totally without validity, but humans have an entertaining habit of taking valid philosophical constructs to hilarious extremes. Don’t you think?”

Suddenly I had an epiphany as if struck by a bolt from the blue. “You laughed,” I shouted. “And that’s not the first time.” God snorted at this. “Of course I laughed,” God gasped while regaining control. “Why wouldn’t I?” “But, that means you have a sense of humor,” I exclaimed. “That’s a human emotion.” “Is it?” God suddenly turned serious. “Isn’t it?” I replied. “”Well of course not,” God chuckled again. “Many sentient beings have a sense of humor besides humans. Have you never watched animals play tricks on one another? Of course you have. Cats and dogs and monkeys and squirrels and birds. And these are only a few in your world. Humor and laughter, or what you call laughter, is universal. The best human word for it is joy. All of higher beings capable of emotion experience this, precisely because it is one of my primary characteristics.” “Really?” This was starting to get quite interesting…

“So, do you get sad?” I asked. “No, that one is more rare,” God replied. “I know what your sadness is, of course, because it is part of me. And other beings both in your world and others feel sadness. But, no, I don’t feel sadness.”

“What about anger?” I asked. “Nope, no anger.” “But the Bible talks about you being a wrathful and vengeful God,” I challenged. “Oh, please,” God laughed again. “Do you believe everything you read?” “But the Bible is your inspired word, according to its believers.” “You are toying with me,” God said. “This is a good time for you to be thankful I am not the vengeful God of your human Bible. You don’t believe the Bible, or the Koran, or the Torah, or any of the other scriptures of any of the world’s religions, and its disingenuous for you to pretend to defend them.” “So,“ I replied. “None of them are true?” “All of them have truths in them,” God explained patiently. “But no, none of them are fully true, and how could they be?”

Confused, I asked God to explain.

“First, you need to slow down a bit. You're pulling ahead of your friends and they'll think you're trying to leave them behind. Friends are important to you, you know." True, I thought. "True dat," God laughed. "I really like that expression."

"Now, keep your eye on the path,” he directed. “And I’ll explain the tiny bit about me that you’re capable of understanding.”

And so I rode and listened…

Happy Is as Happy Does...

2010-08-07T12:04:00.001-07:00

So, I don't think I've mentioned that my recent college graduate got himself a full-time job peripherally related to his field of study less than a month after finishing classes. In this economy, we grown-ups know how big a deal this is - had to explain it to him, as they don't teach gratitude, appreciation or "whew" in college these days. I think he gets it, though...

He's always been the one I've worried about - a sensitive lad who I never understood and largely ignored during his formative years because I didn't understand him. He's never shown an ounce of ambition, other than aspiring to be a benevolent ruler of the world during a relatively brief phase he long ago outgrew. Prior and since, he's pretty much lived in his trash strewn cave with a pair of headsets on, gaming or surfing or playing one of his axes or video gaming - emerging to eat, iron pants and shirts (yeah, not sure what that's about), and meandering off to school or work.

He's worked part time since starting college - one of these grindingly reliable workers who had the good fortune to land a work-study data entry job which allowed him to utilize his 9,000 wpm error-free keyboard skills while only using .ooo374 percent of his grey matter...

Since he started preschool, it has been a daily ritual for me to ask him how his day had been. And since he started preschool, if he chose to respond at all, the answer has been along the lines of, "Okay," or "Hmmmm," or some unintelligible grunting noise. Some rituals exist for rituals' sake, you know. I've kept it up through his college years, and when he started working. I asked because I cared, and wanted him to know I cared. And I accepted his answer because, well, what the hell else was I going to do? Beat it out of him? I was a pretty shitty father, but even I know that's not the way to go. Only time will tell how badly I fucked him up - he won't admit it yet. He really does seem to be doing pretty well so far. In his own way... (He hates my elipses, so just threw a few in to get his goat.)

Oh, did I mention he is astronomically brilliant? No? Sorry. He's astronomically brilliant. For the longest time I worried that he would be the world's smartest person getting by in life by spitting on windshields and asking for quarters. I'm hoping/thinking I was way off on that one...

Anyway, he's been at his new job for a few weeks now, so, keeping the ritual alive, I ask him every evening how his day was. And every evening the answer has been along the lines of, "Okay," or "Hmmmm," or some unintelligible grunting noise. Life can be interesting that way, you know?

So I decided to step it up a notch the other evening, and asked, "But are you having fun?" To which the world's smartest kid, who like his father doesn't seem to much have fun, but who is thankfully not getting by in life by spitting on windshields and asking for quarters, answered, "If you're not having fun, maybe you should be doing some other kind of work." See? I told you. Smart kid, eh?

Of course, I was dumbstruck. Speechless. Shocked. Amazed. Confused. The whole idea of having fun at work and enjoying what I do for a living is pretty alien to me. I mean, I'm apparently not very happy anyway, something that I've only recently come to realize. And I've been working pretty steadily since I was about ten years old. And yes, I'm a grinder, too - vacation is an alien concept, and I rack up unused PTO the way most people collect pennies as pocket change. And its not like I've never had an enjoyable moment working, because of course I have. Why hell, I'd even go so far as to say that in four decades of working I've probably been excited to go to work at least, oh...maybe...twenty or thirty times. Maybe? Hmmm....

But let's not dwell on how sad it is to be me. Because really, it's not. I'm a slow starter, but I'm starting to understand that there might be some happiness in my future, possibly even while working. Maybe? But recently I've started figuring out at least a little bit how and where to find it - happiness, that is, outside of work for the most part. On the happiness count, I'm feeling pretty good about the going forward part of my life - have never been very adept at looking back and have no immediate plans at improving that skill set...

Rather, let's dwell on how excited I am that both of my kids have made it to adulthood remarkably well-balanced, given the rather useless influence I was on their lives. They are unencumbered by unwieldy relationships, unhealthy addictions, unplanned progeny, unwelcome criminal records. Woo hoo! We win!!!

And let's focus on the fact that they realize there is way more to life than work, but that, as they are possibly going to spend the majority of their waking hours for the next few decades working, they should at least be doing something they enjoy and which gives them some satisfaction. I can only imagine that they, two very sharp youngsters, came to this realization by growing up in a household with two parents who spent the majority of our waking hours working, and who for the most part seemed generally unhappy doing what we did. I guess when I think about it, I managed to convey something valuable to them despite my myriad parental shortcomings. I didn't have any way of teaching them how to be happy, because I've not yet quite figured it out even now. Instead, through an unintended but apparently effective exercise in negative reinforcement - by discouraging them from following in my footsteps, I perhaps taught them how to not be miserable. I suppose there are worse places to start out one's working life...

Knowing something and turning that knowledge into meaningful action are two entirely different things. I've long appreciated Thoreau's observation: "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." To date, I have. Going forward, I won't. I'm hopeful my kids won't either. Very hopeful.

I love you, my darlings...

Just Like Riding a Bicycle…

2010-07-18T20:09:00.000-07:00

It was recently brought to my attention that I’ve not written anything about sex in a while. So sorry. And no, I’ve not given it up, exactly. You see, the wife had some pretty major “girl surgery” a few weeks back, and in deference to her tender state during her recovery (and at the insistence of her overly jovial physician), we’ve taken a little break from, err, well…you know. I think we’re at around T minus ten days or so. Not that we’re counting or anything. But, they say its just like riding a bicycle…

Ok, confession time. This post isn’t about sex. Yep, that was just a cheap marketing ploy to drag you in after my extended absence. But it is about bike riding, and life, and how the two kind of sort of relate to one another…

I went on a nice ride this morning, as I do every Sunday morning. Which, now that I think of it, used to be reserved for having sex. But that was a long time ago, and that ritual only lasted for, oh, say, a decade or two. Addicts are into ritual, in case you didn’t know. We get pretty damned cranky when our rituals get interrupted, truth be told. Now that I know I’m an addict, I’ve made it a point to replace bad rituals (no, not sex – that’s a really good ritual) with good rituals. No, other good rituals, you know? Since it’s gotten hot I’ve started going for long rides early on Sunday mornings, letting the little woman sleep in as late as she wants and then enjoy a leisurely tryst with her New York Times crosswords. Yes, we adapt with age, don’t we?

Anyway, I often ride alone, which is how I’ve gone through much of my life. Didn’t know I was alone, what with being surrounded by people who love me and all. Kind of imagine rolling down the road on a bike but with a fortress wall attached to you. Lots of weight, tough to get up hills or slow down once you’re headed downhill, and about as aerodynamic as a brick. I’m working on that…

Sometimes I ride with an old friend who is generally more interested in talking politics than he is in riding long and hard, which is ok because we both know what the deal is at the outset. He’s a great guy, in good shape despite being a bit older than me, and I try not to ride him into the ground. I do push him, though, and he’s usually only good for about half the distance I usually go. We know that going in, too, so nobody’s feelings get hurt…

Today, though, I rode with a new friend. She belongs to a group I visit with regularly, a bunch of whom have taken up riding recently. I like to think I’ve been a little bit of an inspiration to them in this regard – know they’ll all be happier and healthier for it. If it turns out I wasn’t, I’m trusting they’ll humor me in my dotage and allow me to keep believing it. I know they’re giving up smoking one after another, and that’s a good thing regardless of their motivation. I don’t take any credit for that, but am happy for them. Nothing better than a long ride or run or just a stint on the treadmill to allow the body to get your full attention regarding how you’re treating it…

Anyhow, my new friend has only been riding for a couple of months, I think she said. Quit smoking and took up riding – an excellent plan. I’ve developed the theory that it is always easier to give up a bad habit if you immediately replace it with a good one. I remember when I gave up smoking at twenty years-old – kicking a 3 pack-a-day habit that had started more than a decade earlier. Hey, I never told anyone I was a good kid. I wasn’t, believe me. Anyway, the first day I threw them away (flushed a half-carton down the toilet if memory serves), I immediately began running something like two miles a day. To the gym. Where I’d shoot hoops for an hour, lift weights, roast myself in the sauna. Nope, not a halfway guy, me. It worked. What can I say?

Ok, I digressed again. Sorry…

So, anyway, I took her on a section of the trail she hadn’t been on before, and did my best not to push her, although I think I did a bit. She’d done 20 miles yesterday, and back-to-back when you’re starting out can be tough. She did great, and we had a nice visit. Learned a little about each other and I was gratified to learn that she’s a moderate Democrat, as am I. We laughed that it just seems to never fail that if someone is happy and caring and fairly well educated, this is the camp they’re likely to be in. No offense to my seemingly happy educated friends who don’t know yet this is where you’re headed. We’re coming out of some rough times and some have developed bad habits. You’ll get there and we’ll be waiting for you…

Anyway, when she ran out of gas I saw her back to her car, reloaded my water bottles and headed out to a section of the trail I’d never been on. Turns out it wasn’t too well suited to the road bike I was riding, so I had to take it easy to save my tires. And I had to navigate unfamiliar territory a bit by feel. But I picked up familiar landmarks along the way, worked my way from lost to found, and made it back to my car, rack and home without any untoward incidents. And life kind of works that way, doesn’t it?

Like most kids, in these parts at least, I grew up on a bike. Okay, well, not really. Actually, I was one of the late bloomers, having suffered a couple of nasty wrecks when I was 5 or so, following inappropriate directions from an older brother who I now know was dead set on killing me in the nest, but which I didn’t realize at the time. As a result, I didn’t get into riding in earnest until I was probably about eight, but then I focused on making up for lost time. I got to where I could ride a wheelie on my old sting-ray for blocks, and pretty much nobody would race me. I bought my first 3-speed with my paper route money when I was about ten, then moved up to a Dawe’s Galaxy British touring bike when I was twelve or so. It cost me $300, I remember. My mother raised holy hell and my Dad said, “He earned his money he can spend it however he wants.” Thanks, Dad. And boy, did I ever put some serious miles on that thing…

Then…hmmm. Now that I think of it, I quit riding bikes about the time I started thinking about sex. I got so busy then with sex and drinking and drugs and music and acting the fool, riding a bike never again crossed my mind. As a matter of fact, prior to a couple of years ago, I think I only took one semi-serious ride on a bike when I was about 30, outside of demonstrating techniques for my daughter who turned into a serious kid rider in the neighborhood for a short while, and my son who never did get the hang of it and can’t ride to this day. Interestingly, she’s an excellent driver, while he really, really needs to live someplace with efficient mass transit. Am not sure whether there’s a correlation or not, but maybe…

Anyway, my thought between the correlation of bike riding and life goes something like this:

We can choose to ride alone, or with friends. For most of us its probably best that we do a little of each. It doesn’t seem right to drag someone, particularly a novice, down a path we’ve never been before, but even more wrong to not ever explore something new. They call it getting in a rut for a reason, and any cyclist who has been around awhile knows what I’m talking about, and how much this is something to avoid. When I first started into my spiritual studies, I remember an author suggesting that the best route is to travel a path that someone has been before, because it’s been proven. And I’m comfortable riding in someone’s wake for a bit, but can’t buy into the notion that this is by definition the best route to the destination, nor even that his or her destination is the right destination for me…

When we’re not riding alone, it is good to ride with old friends from time to time, but also with new friends. They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but I’m not sure that’s always the case. Sometimes I feel like talking politics, and sometimes I know he needs to. And sometimes old friends will find a shaded trailway out in the country the ideal time to share some current pain or achievement. Riding with new friends, though, gives us a chance to expand our horizons – to learn new things about others we didn’t, and in the course of that maybe learn a little about ourselves. It allows us to empathize with where they are in their development, perhaps assist in some small way, to be reminded of where we are in our own and how we got there, and to take stock of whether that’s where we want to be…

And while we’re riding through life, we learn how important it is to keep our eye on the road, but not to become so fixated on the course we fail to appreciate the pair of mallards wheeling in for a silent landing on the mirror surface of the river, the squirrels chasing each other merrily up a tree, the beauty of a thunderhead towering against a crimson sunset or the shimmer of the first break of dawn in the east as we set forth to beat the heat of the day. We learn to appreciate the power of the wind, fighting us or helping us along, and to take advantage of the long downhill to gather speed without losing control, with the momentum from the plunge and our weight on the pedals pressing us up the next challenging climb, adjusting our efforts and gearing and breathing to make the summit and see what lies beyond…

And then, of course, there’s always sex…

Anchors aweigh

2010-07-03T04:57:00.000-07:00

To "weigh anchor" is to bring it aboard a vessel in preparation for departure. The phrase "anchor's aweigh" is a report that the anchor is clear of the sea bottom and, therefore, the ship is officially underway. ~Wikipedia~

So, following my wife's birthday dinner last night, my youngest was in our room jabbering about whatever it is he jabbers about when he's half baked (I tend to only half listen, and in this case was half paying attention to the conversation he and she were half having while I was half reading a book and half watching television - one of those evenings, you know...), when he suddenly stopped, grinned that goofy grin of his, and stated laughingly, "I have a job." The half realizations of the half stoned...

By all the measures I've adopted to gauge milestones in my life, I think I've officially reached one. Probably a big one. My wife and I are both gainfully employed, very nearly debt-free, and have manged to raise two wonderful children who are both college graduates, both now gainfully employed, both healthy, neither in trouble with the law, burdened with unwanted progeny or encumbered in complex relationships. We have helped them build sound vessels in which to navigate the tumultuous seas of life, and they are pulling slowly away from the dock to which they've been tethered for more than two decades. Admittedly, they're still puttering around the harbor and tying back up to our craft from time to time, but like baby birds testing their wings, they will continue to flitter further and further from the nest, and soon we'll see them disappear over the horizon, headed off on their own adventure, setting their own course and guiding their own vessels through life. Fair sailing, sweethearts...

To complete this tortured analogy, I think we need to imagine ourselves players in Kevin Costner's Waterworld. You see, our "dock" is in fact nothing more than another slightly larger, slightly more solid vessel, bobbing gently on the sea of existence, anchored well but affixed firmly to nothing, for there is nothing firm to which we can or should seek to affix ourselves. And the anchor we chose to let down more than twenty years ago to stabilize ourselves while we engaged in the boat building and sailor training business is one that can be drawn up at any time. And now we are very nearly at that point where we must decide what our next destination is, hoist our sails, head our bow quartering off the prevailing breeze, and get underway. The only other choice is to sit in this same spot on the vast infinite sea of life, bobbing up and down gently at times, and storm tossed at others, but always at the mercy of whatever intentionally or unintentionally floats our way. And that would be a waste of potentially favorable breezes, no?

There has lately been a lot of talk in the news about Abby Sunderland, a 16 year-old who was raised on the water and whose parents launched her on a global circumnavigation that came up short when her mast was snapped by a giant wave. I feel sorry for her and for them as regards the aborted voyage, but am happy for both that she survived and is coming home safely. What a splendid adventure, and all I can say to the critics is, "Shut the fuck up!" My god, to have raised such a brave and competent young lady and entrusted to her such a spectacular journey speaks volumes on the positive side for the whole family. A 16 year-old young woman is in the prime of her life - Joan of Arc was heading toward leadership of an army at this age, for goodness sake. Abby's skills were certainly sufficient to the task she chose. Bad things happen in the sea of life, and even more so on the actual ocean, where giant waves not only snap small craft masts but swallow whole enormous vessels full of experienced sailors. That she was able to survive this lesson and have it inform the balance of her existence is a wonderful gift that most of us never experience - certainly at so early an age. It didn't kill her, so will make her stronger...

I pray that my two young allegorical sailors don't make the avoidance of challenge the cornerstone of their lives, but rather seek adventure and new experiences and to suck every morsel of living they can out of the brief years they've been allotted. I want them to keep their vessels solid, practice their craft and hone their skills, learn to read life's rips and eddies, understand the stars and and tides and currents and prevailing winds. I want them to chart their own courses and steer their own vessels and appreciate the diverse cultures and experiences that will come their way. And most of all, I want them to keep us posted from time to time on their whereabouts and conditions, to know that we will do the same, and that they are welcome to rendezvous from time to time wherever we happen to be in our travels, and to tie up or sail alongside for a bit if they are inclined. And if they get caught in a storm, lose their sails or masts or lines, and find themselves foundering, to know that we'll get to them if we can, and help them refit, stock up provisions, and get back underway. Because, after all, that's what we sailors do...

So, anchor is stowed and we're tacking to port. Let's do this thing...

Juxtaposition...

2010-06-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

So, Thursday night my son was fiddling around on the wife's laptop at the kitchen table, and opened some conversation with me about a governmental initiative ongoing regarding shareware and piracy and BitTorrent and a bunch of other things that I really don't understand, which quickly devolved into his shouting screed against government, the futility of citizen activism, and "why the hell should I vote when there's nobody to vote for..." Ah, the angst of youth...

I'm jealous, of course, as at his age I'd only voted in one election, and then not intelligently or with any passion or great conviction. I just felt, headed into my first legal opportunity to vote and already part of the green machine, that if my employer was going to stick an M-16 in my hand, a .45 on my hip, and a few grenades hanging off my flak jacket and send me into harm's way, the least I could do before shipping out was to vote. I didn't really understand how government worked, the roles or functions of political parties or lobbyists, or much of anything else. We were only slightly beyond Viet Nam and Watergate, and the standing of government in the eyes of the average teenager or any age voter for that matter was at a record low. Maybe even lower than right now...

My boy, on the other hand, was raised in an intensely political household, grew up the son of a political activist and Congressional candidate, and was responsible for building and maintaining a campaign website that was recognized at the time by a national political magazine as one of the best in Texas. Not bad for a then 12 year old, eh?

And now my youngest offspring, a decade later and after spending his life subjected to voluminous information unimaginable in my youth, constant exposure to the 24 hour news cycle, unlimited access to commentary and dissection on every stripe of matter, and political discourse across the spectrum both electronically and in person, was sitting in my kitchen expressing a somewhat reasoned angst against politics and government and the system and "the man" that hearkened back to those halcyon days of the rock era of my youth. Man, did we have great music in the 70s, or what?

I found myself trying to calmly explain to him the sometimes subtle distinctions between battles and wars, strategy and tactics, progress and perfection, participation and apathy. These aren't easy distinctions to argue with a young man who is measurably brighter than I or his peers ever hoped to be, with a mind like a razor and a passionate indifference to the efficacy of government. Only a couple of years ago, while so many of his age group, with my and others' unsubtle encouragement, were fervently supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama, this one was dripping with cynicism and scorn for "another corporate lackey," based on the seemingly irrefutable argument that a successful participant in the corporate exercise of contemporary American politics can be nothing but. The whole notion of having to vote for "the lesser of two evils" sits and sat poorly with him, and while he did vote for my candidate, it was reluctantly, and might not be repeated any time soon.

I reminded him that, while I'd failed in my 18 month campaign, a battle I'd had with the Federal Election Commission, the immediate outcome of which precipitated the whole disastrous exercise, was ultimately decided in my favor and has significantly improved the ability for an average Joe candidate to wage such a battle going forward against entrenched and monied incumbents - no small feat. I also reminded him that another battle I'd lost on its face has resulted in a significant rewrite of Texas political petition regulations, with the end result being that dozens of local option elections which hitherto would have been defeated have proven successful over intervening years. I even reminded him that, while Barack Obama had been handily defeated in my overly red home state, that we had cut the traditional GOP victory margin in half here, potentially marking a tidal change that might help unseat the incumbent Governor and mark a major shift in the state's political course. Or maybe not...

My rationale for making all these arguments was to try and encourage the lad to retain some focus and to remain involved and to care - something he's never been too big at. Which made me recall that my own apathy at his age and for more than a decade beyond was born of ignorance - a lack of concern coupled with a relative lack of information. And I then realized that his is born of the exact opposite - too much exposure, information, understanding. And yet both sets of contributing factors had brought us to not so different situations - my voting blindly in relative ignorance only because I felt it was my duty, and his refusing to participate in a dirty system over a too fine understanding of its reality. Neither being a healthy approach or winning recipe for the maintenance of a civil society...

And the final thought I had walking away from this exchange was a sense of wondering at exactly what point I had developed the patience and acceptance of nuance and imperfection that is the hallmark of an old man. And pondering whether somehow the distinction between knowledge and wisdom might somehow be contained in the answer to that question. And imagining what sort of man my son would grow up to be, and the nature of the world he would come of age in. And I remembered back to the cynicism of my own youth when I was of the conviction that bringing a child into the shitty world I lived in back then would be tantamount to a mortal sin. And I wondered how different we really are, and how much alike...

You win some...

2010-06-12T04:02:00.000-07:00

So, kind of a frustrating week at work. Yes, I know I don't blog about work, except it was my font of enlightenment this week. Life is like a box of chocolates, you know?

My business, by the way, is human trafficking. Yes, really. In my professional life I'm an executive recruiter - a headhunter in everyday parlance. Its been an interesting and sometimes lucrative gig, but obviously tough in an economy that spent last year shedding jobs at a record pace, with this year seeing an uptick, but only slightly. Now we're eating bugs instead of sawdust, if you catch my drift. Enough to live on but nowhere near enough to thrive on. Our industry has shed roughly half the folks who were in it at the start of 2008, and not a one is eating as well as they were back then. It is a tough job in the best of circumstances, and these aren't those...

Anyway, Thursday morning we were nearing the end of a long week of negotiations on a high-level deal I was brokering. In my business these days, every deal is tedious. Clients are reluctant to spend top dollar in a market that is supposedly awash in qualified desperate talent, and candidates are busting their humps trying to get all they can from the deal, reluctant to cheaply turn loose of their bird in the hand, if you catch my drift. Trying to get all they can from someone who doesn't want to spend a penny more than required. Are you feeling the disconnect yet?

This project was made more tedious by the fact that the hiring company, while strongly financed, is effectively a start-up in a very precarious sector in which the talent pool is quite sparse, and the candidate they'd finally settled on was passive - meaning he is gainfully and securely employed by a sound company and wasn't looking for a new opportunity when I found him, with very strong compensation and benefits, and with no real threat to his position. To use the a sock-hop analogy, he was the handsomest boy in the room by far, albeit one quiet and quite comfortable standing in the corner by himself watching everyone else spinning and gyrating and making fools of themselves on the dance floor...

Without going into details, he knocked the socks off his suitor, to the degree their socks were knockable. They had multiple visits by phone and in person, and a love fest ensued. Earlier in the year they'd settled on two other prospects not from my stable, but had been unsuccessful in their approach to either, which is why I was invited into the game. This go-round they informed me they had settled on my candidate, setting aside other contenders and confident they could get him into bed or up to the altar or both. Neither party would be super specific in how far they were willing to go to get the deal done, as, if you'll recall, the buyer is reluctant to pay and the seller is reluctant to sell. He was open about his top concerns, and these were shared with the client, who crafted a fairly generous offer for the market and their richest to date by far. Unfortunately, it only responded weakly to his three major concerns, while offering a few perks that he liked but hadn't asked for, and which he didn't value overly highly. Uh-oh...

Without boring you to death with detail, suffice to say that the week which could and should have been spent in hearty celebration of a deal well done instead devolved into protracted and intense bargaining, with both parties talking past each other, acting on their own fears and concerns rather than listening closely to the other and seeking to find a workable middle ground. Sort of like Washington, now that I think of it...

On Thursday morning, while conversing with my client, he said, "You must have the worst job in the world. You get the right people together, share information as best you can to help make the deal work, but in the end you have absolutely no control over the outcome. None." Welcome to my world...

In my last conversation with the candidate yesterday, he told me I'd been wonderful to work with, that it had been an interesting experience, and shared his view that nobody had lost anything in the process. In the end the client had just proven unwilling to adequately address his concerns. The client indicated that they remain impressed with my work - said that he was proud of their effort and of the package they'd offered, which was indeed impressive, and that the candidate was unreasonable. And so, after a process which took more than three weeks of intensive closing activity following a months-long search, the candidate was right where he started with little likelihood of advancing his career in the exponential manner this opportunity afforded. The clients, proud of their steadfastness, remain without a Chief Operating Officer. And I am left in the dust with nothing to show for my efforts...

I told a few friends yesterday evening that I really wished I still drank, as this would definitely have been one of those evenings, if ever there was one. Instead, I sat in my Friday night AA meeting and listened more closely than usual to the Serenity Prayer we open with: "God, grant me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change, the strength to change those things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Amen.

On God and stuff...

2010-06-04T19:06:00.001-07:00

I begin by apologizing for taking last weekend off. I know a few of you really look forward to seeing what sort of drivel I'll spew each weekend - hope you found a satisfactory substitute. It was Memorial Day weekend after all, and we have been having a bit of a rocky time around the old homestead, and the Mineral Wells Trailway did beckon me and my bicycle, and...well, sometimes, we all just need to take a break from whatever habits we form, be they good or bad. Habits, I think, are by definition confining - sometimes comforting and sometimes destructive, but in any case limiting if we allow them to be. But here I am, back for another round...

So, I'm pretty sure that way back toward the beginning of this thing I probably mentioned the corollaries between AA and Buddhism. Yes? Now I always fret a bit about describing myself as a Buddhist, because I have friends who are real Buddhists - sitting zazen and reading sutras and following the Noble Eightfold Path. I'm not one of these, and may never be. And I'm sure I have alcoholic friends who will argue whether I am an alcoholic at all, given that when I finally decided to quit I quit, and that while few who knew me prior to a year ago would recognize me without a drink of some sort in hand or nearby, thankfully far fewer ever saw me totally shit-faced, which didn't happen often but was never a pretty sight. Or experience. For me or anyone near me. My alcoholic doubter friends are, as a general rule, not in the program...

The appeal to me of both AA and Buddhism, and even more so Taoism, which probably more accurately describes my spiritual path, is that they are decidedly non-hierarchical, have suggested readings and texts but nothing accepted rigidly as the infallible scripture, and have rules, if you can call them that, which are so simple and malleable they hardly count as rules as all. Nobody baptizes you into the fold, and nobody can kick you out. The whole load is on me, or you, the individual practitioner, and we own alone whatever successes or failures we achieve in either medium. Pretty empowering, huh? If we do well in these circumstances, its a major ego-boost, right?

Which is interesting, because the most crucial corollaries between recovery from addiction and The Path are a heightened sense of awareness and the absolute elimination of the ego. These are the objectives, anyway. Now some in AA might argue with me on this, and as I don't argue this could prove frustrating. Sorry...

We hear in our meeting rooms with great regularity, "Give it over to God." For those of us successfully recovering in the program but who aren't believers in a conventional God model, though, what many of us hear is, "Get out of yourself already." The God thing can be a real challenge for many, and I think that's too bad, because the point is not so much to have a powerful omnipotent vigilant being to watch over us and take up our individual burdens when the need arises, as it is to recognize and admit our insignificance and inability to, on our own, overcome the vast forces of the universe outside of our selves, or the greater challenge of the ego we confuse as our selves. So, the ego is the enemy, and full awareness is our ability to recognize the enemy when it rears its head, ignore it as the fallacy it is, and accept our connectedness with the universe in all its manifestations. I guess I've often thought of the separate stand-alone God man created in his image to be sort of a manifestation of humanity's ego, but that's probably a philosophical discussion best left for another time.

So, what's my point? Well...

As I am rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of committing to making alcohol powerless over me, and accepting myself to be powerless over alcohol without help, I continue to stumble soberly along the spiritual path, seeking a keener understanding of myself, an awareness of and growing disdain for my ego, a sense of connection with all manifestations of the universe, a desire for a simpler and saner life coupled with a grudging acceptance of the one I have. Daily I come upon answers to questions asked and unasked, but each one spawns another. It is as when we develop more powerful telescopes and microscopes and other investigative tools and techniques, and come to realize that the better we see, the more there is to see. I detect no lessening of this phenomenon in my own physical or spiritual life, nor in the endless quest for understanding that too small a contingent of mankind is engaged in. And so, recognizing the incredibly finite nature of my mortal existence, and hoping to derive as much from it and contribute as much to it as I can, I am settling comfortably onto the path which reveals itself to me each day, a path which is connected to all other paths, which connects me to all other beings, which meanders through and is dependent on the totality of the universe seen and unseen. And I am committing myself to being grateful every day for the gift of my human life, for self-awareness despite the fallacy of the self, and for a mind and spirit that allows me to put it all in a wonderful wondrous harmonious context and to marvel at its fantastic intricacies.

In closing, let me say that in sharing these meager thoughts I do not intend to belittle any reader's belief in some particular manifestation of God. I am comfortable in my own lack of understanding of the unknown and unknowable, and pray the same for all my friends. For some God is Allah, and for others the Judeo-Christian God as portrayed by Charlton Heston or James Caviezel; for some Vishnu or one of his pantheon of lesser Gods. Many consider earth to be God, or Mother Nature. My wife, who was raised Jewish, is certain that God is a Golden Retriever, and who am I to say otherwise? The point is that, for the addict or alcoholic, or really for anyone of curious mind and searching spirit, the image we conjure up to establish a relationship with our higher power is insignificant relative to our having that relationship. I love to paraphrase a quote I once read but can't now lay my hands on, attributed to Buddha, perhaps from his dialogue with Ananthapindika, in which the Buddha is reported to have said, "There is so much in life that we can know, and so much that we can never know - it is best to focus on that which we can know."

Following is a light rewrite of the traditional 12 steps that I generated in my earliest days, to help me get beyond the "God thing" which too many in need find a barrier to joining the program that has helped so many. If it helps you, feel free to adopt it as you own.

12 Steps to Sobriety for Non-Christians, Atheists and Agnostics

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to align our will and our lives with our Higher Power.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Became entirely ready to allow total alignment with our Higher Power to eliminate all our defects of character.
7. Humbly aligned ourselves with our Higher Power to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through study and meditation to improve our alignment with our Higher Power, seeking only knowledge of our proper role in the Universe and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

A Suit of Armor...

2010-05-22T05:43:00.001-07:00

So, I've known for a long time that I'm more than a little weird. I have shared that already, yes? Okay, good. I thought so...

Apparently my therapist and my wife's therapist are in cahoots, because they've both determined without collaborating that I live inside a very robust suit of armor. Heck, I guess even my older Sis' therapist figured that out a long time ago, although in reference to my father - the tree from which I didn't fall too far. I've never questioned him on how he came to be the way he is, and am not at all certain that particular analysis might be true. I always felt him to be warm and caring toward me. Can a suit of armor be semi-permeable? Hmmm...

Anyway, this is all something of a revelation for me that I'm having to deal with, and its not easy. Only a short while ago, if you had asked me whether I was open and warm and caring, I'd have said yes without hesitation. I really do have a deep sense of empathy, feel the pain of others, am not ashamed to shed a tear. Just shed one this morning, in fact, over a story a Facebook friend wrote for a national magazine.

I fret over the fate of mankind - constantly. I hurt for victims of war and pestilence and natural disaster. If I come across an accident, I am the first out of my car trying to render aid. If a co-worker suffers a loss, the destruction of a relationship, some personal pain or suffering - I'm the first to lend comfort. Hell, I've been known to cry when shipping a puppy off to a good home. So, I'm a warm caring softie, yes? Well, maybe not so much...

I first came to realize some disturbing facets of my character back around the time of my initial semi-breakdown in the spring of '08. I had run myself a bit too ragged in the early grass-roots stages of the Obama campaign - keeping too long hours juggling campaign obligations and work, drinking too much, eating too little and too poorly, carrying more of a burden than was perhaps prudent. Most critically, I had let my energy reserves run so low that I found myself huddled in almost a ball in my bedroom, crying inconsolably, feeling lost and confused and afraid, and I'm pretty sure I was most afraid of me. Energy reserves, I know now, are very important - just to get through life and maintain some sort of mental and spiritual balance, and even more so if you have the added task of generating and maintaining an impregnable suit of psychic armor. Of course, when you don't know you have this armor thing going on, its kind of hard to focus on maintaining it...

So, what was my epiphany? Which I didn't recognize as an epiphany at the time? That I love mankind as a whole, but have little patience for individual human beings. I apparently make exceptions for strangers in pain, but these exceptions are temporary and only for strangers. And, if you're someone I really should care about - someone who loves me and truly cares for me, in whose life I play a central role and who should be able to rely on me for support? Look somewhere else. I'm too busy emoting about the world to care about you. Besides, you've been around me enough you should have picked up my strength. You should be resilient and strong and self-reliant, not some simpering weakling looking to me for support. I've got more important concerns to address. Hmmm... Can you say, "Asshole?"

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, "Be the change you want to see." I've always described myself as a "forest person" rather than a "tree person," and I think that remains largely true. However, I'm slowly coming to realize that I'm not God. Quite a letdown, let me tell you. In the end, I'm just another tree in the forest, and a pretty fucked up one at that. I may stand taller than the trees around me, and I may have developed the ability to generate some really lush foliage, but at the end of the day, I'm just another tree, and one with some really severe structural issues that need to be addressed. I'm working on them...

And, while my first responsibility is to be as strong and healthy a tree as I can be, I need to be considerate of the trees around me, the saplings below me, the soil in which we all grow. And I need to remind myself constantly that the health of the forest, to the slight degree I can affect it, depends on me being the best steward I can be of the gifts I've been given, and to do everything that I can to ensure the health and growth of those trees nearest me. My sphere of influence is very finite, but strongest right where I stand and nearby. And how brilliant was it for me to think I could ensure the health of the forest while my own spot was rotten and withering?

So, my lesson of the week is to remember that I'm not God, which I have to tell you is a real letdown. Oh, I mentioned that already? Yes, but still...

And so I have to take off this armor, this ego, this cloying fear-filled sense of self that won't let others near me and won't let me share of myself. And I need to set it aside. I've known this, conceptually and intellectually, for some time, and have been working on it sporadically and rationally. And half-heartedly. But it takes quite a bit more than this. Actually, a lot more than this. It takes the full focus of the body, mind, and spirit. It is an intense emotional and spiritual exercise, but one I know I can do. If I can just figure out how to get these buckles undone on this damn heavy sweltering constraining suit of armor. Hey, not as easy as it sounds, smart ass. We trees don't have opposable thumbs, you know?

...and smell the roses

2010-05-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

Having just this morning finished reading Stephen King's Under the Dome, I am reminded once again how much I have to be grateful for, and how rarely I truly am. To live a life that affords me the leisure hours to enjoy more than 1,000 pages of fiction, in a country and a world that allows King and armies of other artists to engage in creative activities that have nothing to do with providing food, shelter or clothing, but which bring endless enjoyment to so many? I mean, how lucky are we, and how lucky am I? Very, very, very...and never sufficiently appreciative.

Reading King's book I am reminded of how much we have, and how much can go wrong in life. Sure, it's science fiction, but he draws from many plausible aspects of reality. Like, how would our lives be if we really had a truly self-serving despotic government, insufficient air or water or food for survival, insufficient energy to run our businesses or cook our food or warm our homes, non-existent police protection, or worse - law enforcement bent not on protecting freedom and rights, but on subverting these. I and we are fortunate to live a modern and actually quite challenge-free existence, compared to what King depicts, but also compared to the reality that too much of humanity still faces on a daily basis. So...

So, how does life bless me? Let me count the ways:

1. I am alive as a human being. In a universe that is endless in every measure, I have the good fortune of being composed of just the right elements in just the right configuration under just the right environmental circumstance to be a human being. I am allowed to be self-aware, to be able to seek and understand the deeper meanings of my life, of God and the infinite, of history, of science and all the material and energy and non-material aspects of existence, and to manipulate much of this to my own end. All of humanity that has ever existed or will ever exist comprises less than a single grain of sand in the endless ocean of the cosmos, and yet I get to be part of this human experience, if only for a nanosecond in the infinite life of the universe. How cool is that? How much greater a blessing could one ask for?
2. I have a family and friends who love me, despite my myriad flaws and weaknesses and frailties and shortcomings; who recognize and respect me for who I am, forgive my transgressions, share my hopes and dreams, bolster me when I’m down and humble me when I’m a bit too up, and who allow me the to play the same role in their lives.
3. I have material wealth and comfort and freedom beyond the imaginings of even royalty less than a millennium past, have never suffered a single moment of true hunger or thirst, nor felt the relentless and inescapable exposure to the many ravages that nature can bring against us puny mortals.
4. I have my health, which now includes my sobriety. And as the old Yiddish Bubbes would say, “When you have your health, you have everything.”

Certainly, I have much more than these few things of which to be grateful, but I think these will suffice for now. I think it is entirely possible that one could obsess over enumerating all of the many things for which we could or should be grateful, to the point that we run out of time to actually enjoy the experience of being grateful. I should know, as I’ve done only the tiniest bit of the former and virtually none of the latter…

So, as I proceed through this day, and hopefully every day that follows, I am going to try and recognize and be thankful for the blessing of being an imperfect human – part of an imperfect species among a universe of imperfect species, part of an imperfect family among a planet of imperfect families, living in an imperfect state in an imperfect country on an imperfect planet floating through an imperfect solar system in a universe comprised entirely of imperfect solar systems and planets and species and countries and states and families and individuals. And all of these are part of an incredibly perfect universe. I will be grateful, because I’m pretty damn sure that, at the end of the day, life just doesn’t get any better than this!

Carpe diem!

Life Sux, and then...

2010-05-08T05:06:00.000-07:00

So, I’m a month and a few days shy of completing my first year of sobriety. A few days ago we suffered the first death of someone I knew in my AA group, although I know there will be many more to come. Actually, we’ve had several die recently – most of them, thankfully, of old age or natural causes. At least as natural as the ravaged body of an alcoholic will allow. Not this one, though. Only forty years old, good looking and healthy in appearance, and with a young daughter he loved dearly. Too soon. Too young. Too sad…

I’m no stranger to death – have been intimate with it for most of my life - perhaps more so than many of similar age and background. Since my teen years I’ve buried many – strangers and relatives and old friends and new, from natural causes and murders and accidents and suicides and sickness. I really don’t fear death – haven’t for some time. But, as one of the women at tonight’s meeting said, a sober death can be beautiful. A drunk death cannot…

I didn’t know this young man well. Our group is large and it takes a good while to get established and come to know everyone, but being one of the younger group, he was more open. He generally had a smile on his face, was well liked by all, loved by many. I knew him by name, and we talked a bit on occasion. Although I’m a relative “newcomer,” I came into the program with a sponsor from day one, and never went to a single newcomers’ meeting until about a month ago. It happened to be on the day after this fellow had come back in from “out there.” He was angry at himself, and sad, and confused, and embarrassed. And obviously in deepest spiritual and mental agony…

Almost everyone in the program slips in the early going, and I know he had a few times. He wasn’t forgiving himself this night, though. Not even close, despite all our condolences, best wishes and support. He and I did the man-hug thing, and I told him I was pulling for him and knew he could make it. He tried to smile when we broke, but the eyes that looked back at me were those of a broken spirit. I didn’t know then and don’t know now that I had anything to offer him – he’d been around a lot longer than I. I wish now, though, that I’d tried…

The program allows for forgiveness – in fact demands it. Nobody sits in judgment of anyone else, because we all know that the prodigal returning to our room can so easily be a foreshadowing of ourselves, or the faded image of those who are now decades sober, but who had their own missteps before finally finding the true path. We are directed to “turn it over to God.” I’m not a big God guy, but know we have to get outside of ourselves if we are to survive. This disease is all about being inside ourselves, hating ourselves, hiding from ourselves, killing ourselves. It’s a very dangerous place to stay for any length of time. A drunk alone with himself is locked in the death grip of his own worst enemy, and it is a battle too many don’t survive. Most of the victims go to their grave never having admitted they were alcoholics or addicts. He knew exactly what he was, but couldn’t get away from his boogeyman…

Years ago, when considering a career choice, I’d thought about going into counseling. My mother advised me that I didn’t have the patience for it – wouldn’t tolerate the patient or client who refused to recognize the wisdom of my prescribed treatment and adhere to it. While she was wrong concerning so many things about me through the years, on this one I’m afraid she was right, at least then. My ego was totally unwhupped at that point, and remains pretty stubborn even today...

I’ve found myself wondering lately how much I’ve really changed, being only an infant to sobriety and introspection and spirituality and such. I know I’ve grown over the years – well remember being violently angry at my first friend who committed suicide before I was even out of my teens. Over time I’ve come to realize these are troubled souls. All of them. Some actually do perform the act out of malice, trying to hurt some in the worst possible way for actual or supposed transgressions. Most, however, are just desperately sad and lonely and hopeless, and dealing with things the best way they know how…

I’ve not yet learned the details of my fellow alcoholic’s death, and may not. They don’t really matter, to me at least. I am told he died drunk. For an alcoholic who knows he’s an alcoholic, that’s suicide, whether fast or slow. Some fights are just tougher than we are...

Rest in peace, young friend.

Humble Pie?

2010-04-30T19:01:00.000-07:00

I have long prided myself (maybe a clue there?) on not being a "joiner." I've never felt a compulsion to be part of a group, and have always been something of a loner. I don't see this as either a good or bad thing in and of itself, although a friend recently observed that as I only involve myself in groups in which I am or expect to be the leader, mayhaps there's a bit of arrogance and ego involved? I'm not sure - haven't really set that as a focus to explore, yet. Maybe someday. The truth of the matter is that when I find myself in groups I generally wind up in charge. My therapist has mentioned "charisma." We also discuss "arrogance" a lot. One and the same? I don't think so, but maybe there's a correlation...

Anyway, at my AA meeting this evening one of the members shared, again, his experience with a sponsor who had more than 40 years of sobriety, and who "went back out." That's AA speak, by the way, for "fell off the wagon." That would certainly be humbling. But what I found humbling tonight and find humbling at every meeting I go to is being in a room full of people who, through the gifts of the program, personal perseverance and resilience, and the grace of God (as they understand him/her/it), manage to rack up five, and ten, and twenty, and, yes, forty and more years of sobriety. If you've not wrestled the demon, you have no real way of understanding how truly awe-inspiring a feat this is for those of us who have. Wow!

Anyhow, my point in starting this was that, while I didn't go to AA to become part of a group, I find myself being just that. Not a leader, nor intending to be. Just another lowly drunk gathering with a bunch of other lowly drunks helping each other get through today. And loving it...

AA is about the most democratic sort of group one could imagine, with an openness and honesty and lack of agenda or judgmentalism that I don't know could be achieved in any other environment. I think this is largely because every one of us has, to a large degree, been where the others have been - spent enough time on the same destructive path that we come in the door with the same sort of camaraderie that combat veterans share. Shedding the self and the ego is one of the core components, and every person in there who understands the program in the slightest, understands that each and every one of us, from the shaking smelly first-timer to the grizzled half-century veteran, is exactly the same. One drink away from being "back out there"...

I've found myself more and more dodging opportunities to involve myself with my old circles, mostly political types. Not because I don't like or love them or believe in the cause anymore, because I do. Rather, its because I don't want to lead and don't know how to follow. So I take the third course and just get the hell out of the way. And I don't really miss it for the most part, even though for the longest time and in many ways my main reason for living...

I am thrilled to see many I mentored into political activism becoming effective leaders, and even more to see these mentoring more and more newcomers. I'm remiss to warn them that political activism is an addiction unto itself, because I understand the passion they feel and know the world will be better for them doing what they're doing than if it weren't being done at all. And they'll outgrow it, eventually. We all do. Politics is a grueling avocation that eats up the weak and wears out the strong...

They tell me I'm missed, and I appreciate that immensely. And I know that if I jumped back in I could do some good. What I know now, though, that I didn't know then, is that the world keeps spinning along just fine without me trying to run it or fix it. Truth be told, I was never, or at least not for long, really a part of the group. I was always at the forefront, leading some fight or other, because it was where I wanted to be, and where, for the most part, folks wanted me to be. Arrogance? Charisma? I don't know. The fact of the matter is, I know now, that if the fight is worth fighting, someone will step forward to fight it. And, as likely as not, it will be someone younger or stronger or both, better prepared, more talented, and less burdened than a tired old drunk doing his best to just stay upright on the wagon as it rolls along.

For me, I'm content to chart a new course, seek new understanding, focus on winning my inner battles and leave the others for others. And to spend a few hours a week hanging out with a courageous group of folks who damn sure don't need me to lead them anywhere, and who wouldn't follow if I were arrogant enough to try...

Kind of liberating, this humility thing.

Sins of the Parents

2010-04-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

My therapist says that we spend the first 20 years of our lives being screwed up by our parents, who didn't really know any better, and the second 20-30 years screwing up our own kids, because we don't either. The vast majority of us get so busy starting marriages and families and careers and such, that we haven't the time or inclination to engage in introspection. Somewhere around mid-life, most people reach a transition point, which often manifests itself as a "mid-life crisis" or some such. I think that's where I am right now - not in crisis, but certainly in a bizarre and confusing transition mode. Its decidedly exciting, often painful, but occasionally filled with wondrous moments of enlightenment and understanding...

So, having started this post last night before I began surfing the net and finding out that the chickenshit Governor of AZ actually signed that state's anti-Hispanic race-war bill, I'm supposed to be thankful? Actually, in a perverse way I am, because I was going nowhere fast trying to write about some pretty deep internal stuff that I've barely begun to process. But, as luck would have it, and as often happens these days, I woke up with a bit of an epiphany regarding the correlation between my personal tale and what is taking place in this country. And while its going to take me a while to sort through and understand my personal psychological and familial history and how that affects my present state of being, we have loads of research an analysis on U.S. and AZ history, the history of migration and immigration that has led to the current state of affairs in that state and the nation. And certainly, it is easy to say that unresolved issues on the personal and familial front are only a microcosm of those which have our nation teetering on the brink of violent revolution...

Gangs of New York? No shit? That's what I woke up to playing in my mind this morning. Now you need to understand, I am not a big movie watcher or fan. I really am frightfully immune to POP culture, don't know the names or roles of actors or actresses, designers or entertainers, etc. I am totally unaffected by advertising, be it radio, TV, print, billboards. That world just slides past me like background noise. Gangs of New York? Really? Yep, really...

What is going on in AZ right now is a localized reaction to a national phenomenon, notwithstanding the stark reality that the U.S. has a very real problem with illegal immigration, border security, etc. I believe it is safe to say that our porous borders are in fact an integral part of our free market system, as is the flow of illegal labor and illegal goods. If there is no demand, the supply dries up. This is Adam Smith and John Locke stuff, friends. Americans demand cheap labor, and Arizona is trying to stem the flow of this resource. How un-American is that?

Yet, in a very real way, what Arizona is doing is as American as the annihilation and subjugation of our indigenous people from the earliest settlers, the fierce and violent resistance to the Micks and the Wops and the Chinks and the Krauts. the Spics, of course, and every other group of "them" which has striven to reach our borders and shores. We have a fine and well chronicled history of nativists who appoint themselves the true Americans and fight tooth and nail against newcomers, intruders, interlopers. Immigrants. As though God created the world, partitioned off America, peopled it with Aryans, and said, "This is good." So sorry, and not sure what you learned in school, if anything, but it didn't happen that way. Not even sort of...

This is about economics, true. But its also about race, notwithstanding the vehement denials of Tea Party activists and other xenophobes. And for anything in America to be about race at the outset of the 21st century should be major cause for pause. Have we not learned anything from our past errors, our history, our nature? Can we not, finally, grow up and see this country for what it really is, and for what it might be?

America today is a boiling cauldron of racial tension. If we are a melting pot, as is often suggested, why are we not melting? Is it that the heat hasn't been high enough? If that's been the case, I assure you we're rapidly reaching the boiling point...

The election of Barack Obama, while uplifting to many of us, was like the thunderclap of Armageddon to far too many whites. And the current economic hard times are generating the same violent anti-immigrant reaction that has manifested itself during every steep economic downturn in our and other nation's histories. The difference here, however, is that a subset of the progressively dwindling white majority is feeling more and more threatened, as the superiority which it has enjoyed since it first stepped foot on these shores carrying its thundersticks and its insatiable lust for land and wealth diminishes year by year. A lust, I should add, which isn't limited to pale skinned Europeans but which was and is totally alien to indigenous peoples throughout the world. Whites like to think that we worked a great deal in bartering for Manhattan with the natives, but in their minds, the goods they got were invaluable, as they had no access to such luxuries in their own local economy, while the whole concept of "owning" land was as alien to them as designer handbags are to me.

My closing point on the upcoming race wars in America, in which I dearly hope my darker-skinned brethren will let me play on their team, is that America is never going to be all that it can and should be, unless and until we overcome, once and for all, the archaic, outmoded and destructive concept of race and racial purity. And this necessity to abandon our native cultures and allow ourselves to truly blend fully and completely into something uniquely and admirably American is not limited to Anglos, but to all who aspire for our nation to be healthy and whole, once again and for better reason a beacon to the rest of the world. Only when we are forced to go to scholars and historians to understand the roots of this music or that dish or this bizarre custom or holiday, and where the whole concept of race takes on a curious, quirky, and altogether archaic hue, will we know that we've arrived...

...and so I came to realize that, much more than I ever could possibly have imagined, my subconscious worldview was significantly shaped by, of all things, being raised Roman Catholic in the Protestant Bible-belt south. Really! When yours is the only family on the block whose children attend parochial school, who eat fish on Fridays, who go to mass every single day, who don't go to Vacation Bible school and church camp (where I'm pretty sure they all lost their virginity), you can't help but think of yourself as different. And my mother regaled us with tales of the abuse the Catholic kids suffered in her Depression-era Midwest farm-belt childhood. I never in a million years would have imagined that that upbringing would have created in my subconscious a sense of "otherness," a sort of siege mentality that played a role in my erection of very stout defensive walls in my psyche. Certainly, there are other and probably more meaningful influences that have made me the screwed up individual that I am, but this one was more major than I ever realized...

I know just how those frightened Anglos feel, feeling their birthright slipping away. The Catholics are fighting the same battle and ironically for much the same reasons. In my case, they wound up with one less member, and now I'm getting over those useless and destructive feelings. There is a path for all who seek it...

Life is interesting, no?

Yin and Yang Online...

2010-04-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

So, as anyone who reads this or any other blog is, in fact, part of the online community, today seems especially apropos to discuss the ups and downs of social networking. This week has been particularly instructive for me...

It all began several months ago when I encountered through a friend's Facebook thread a woman who seemed relatively insightful and compassionate, an ardent self-proclaimed Christian, yet one who seemed to manage to extract Jesus' true message from her reading of the Bible. While she didn't seem as dogmatically liberal as most of my political cohort, she was vehemently opposed to the approach and message of hate-spewing, vitriolic right-wing fundamentalist so-called Christians, and I am always fascinated by people willing to break out of traditional molds. After dialoguing with her for some time, through Facebook, email, and a few phone visits, I came to realize that she was a pretty troubled individual with a painful past and present, and that she was putting a bit too much of herself into her online relationship with me, and to my extended online community to which I'd introduced her. Additionally, before I fully realized what I was dealing with, I'd inappropriately shared with her far too much intensely personal information about myself and my family - a slip that would prove costly.

Without going into painful and excruciating detail, something as yet unknown set my FB "friend" off last week that, in an incredibly brief period of time, turned into the meanest and most vitriolic online attack and battle that I have ever personally witnessed or been involved with. The end result was a slew of pointed, hate-filled warfare, de-friending, blocking, etc. that proved very draining and hurtful for many parties, myself and my family among them...

When I told my therapist some time back about my online activity, she pronounced that Facebook and social networking were evil, that she didn't believe anything good could come of it, that it allowed people to create false impressions of relationships as substitutes for real relationships, and that her professional experience had convinced her that there was nothing healthy to be had in this arena.

I will be sharing this experience with my shrink at our next session, and asking her if there is any quick and easy way to recognize a malignant narcissist through either online or direct communication. I am generally considered a good judge of character, but, having failed so miserably in this instance, I hope she says yes and shows me the way. I'd just as soon not relive this experience in either the virtual or real world any time soon...

On the flip side, last night my mate and I joined more than a dozen "friends" whom we'd "met" at various times over the past year or so through Facebook - the vast majority of whom had never met or even spoken to any of the others in the real world. While most but not all were local, living as we do in a metropolitan area of more than 5 million people I am quite confident that, while we might have occasion to be in the same general area, perhaps even at the same venue at some point, there is very little likelihood we would have ever actually spoken to one another, come to realize our commonalities, and thus made the conscious effort to step out of the online world and into the real world to bring our "friendships" into the sort of full realization that is difficult nigh unto impossible online.

Notwithstanding the rather frenzied last minute effort required to change venues of our event to avoid the possibility of the aforementioned psychobitch showing up with her chrome plated Taurus .38 (yes, there really should be a law, but this is Texas, after all) to spoil our fun, the night went off without a hitch. We enjoyed a wonderful evening of meeting and getting to know - yes, really know, new friends. We enjoyed good food and drink, humor, laughter, music - all the sorts of human interaction that can't really be experienced through network apps, but that also wouldn't have been possible were it not for this strange new medium of online interaction that previous generations never had.

The moral I'm taking away from the story? Just as in every other aspect of our lives, there is indeed a yin and yang online. It is as unavoidable as the rising and setting of the sun and moon, the crests and troughs of the ocean's waves. Social networking, like anything else, can have its positives and negatives, and is thus inherently neither good nor evil. Anything which becomes an obsession, of course, will in the end have a damaging effect; be it a real or imagined friendship, a hobby or pastime, politics or religion. I would argue that there is no substitute for face-to-face human interaction, but equally that, on a planet of 7 billion souls, most of whom we'll never meet and which includes some very interesting critters, that the opportunity to interact with a much broader array of humanity, to learn about diverse people and cultures and philosophies and psychologies, is incredibly expanded by the online world. This is not an opportunity that I would willingly forego, but one which should be approached with eyes wide open...

And, as in all things except love for our fellow beings, moderation is a virtue.

Namaste

Sex Sux!

2010-04-10T20:47:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post will absolutely contain graphic materials unsuitable for tender minds or uptight prudes. 'nuff said...

So, those few readers who know me fairly well know that I love sex. So, what the hell's with the title anyway? Well first, being a guy, I can safely say that the worst sex I ever had wasn't awful. We guys are really pretty simple that way. So, no. As an act or an experience or a hobby or an avocation, sex is pretty darn good. But as a currency of exchange? Not so good...

Let's back up a moment. You know, sometimes, a thought comes into our heads fully formed. Just, bam! There it is. A-Z. Spit it out, verbally or on paper or on the keyboard & screen, a few minutes edit and we're good to go. This one, though? More like a blind person in unfamiliar terrain encountering a large irregular unknown object. I bumped into it from three or four directions before I realized it was all one and the same. The first bump was a few weeks back, during some lightweight walking meditation. A thought suddenly came to me that I could kind of, sort of, almost maybe a little get my mind around this voluntary celibacy thing. Now for me, that's weird. Celibacy, I mean. And my thinking suddenly I get it? Too strange. But I do, at least in the spiritual contemplative sense...

Let's admit, first, that for the vast majority of people, the most intense natural pleasure one can feel, for however concentrated a time, and excluding drugs, is the orgasm. It is the escape from reality to beat all escapes from reality. Now, if it happens to be with someone you're in love with and hopelessly attracted to, and the setting is right, and the circumstances perfect, and the timing ideal, and everyone in the game has pushed all the right buttons in all the right sequences with all the right pressure for just the right intervals, we might swear we've "slipped the surly bonds of earth," to quote the Gipper, who borrowed it from aviator poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr. Of course we haven't, we've just suffered a temporary sensory meltdown, following the triggering of every single nerve and muscle in our body. Who knew toes could really curl that way? Wow!

Point is, most humans have certain habits and activities and experiences which bring them particular pleasure, and it is normal to seek to repeat or duplicate these. The addict isn't able to control this urge - it is a compulsion. But in a real sense, as relates to sex, for everyone but the sex addict (no, we're not going there in this post), that's just a matter of degree...

So, if you, like I, accept the Buddhist notion that desire is the root of all suffering, and if we admit that the perfect sexual encounter resulting in the most spectacular of orgasms and afterglows and fireworks and rainbows and bluebirds singing afterward is a very elusive goal with the most fleeting of rewards, then you must admit that life would simply be simpler without it, and foregoing it would free up so much psychic and spiritual energy to put toward more productive pursuits and achievable objectives.

Don't get me wrong. I have no plans of going there. I just get it, as much as one can "get" anything one hasn't experienced...

Which brings me to the second bump in the dark room, triggered by a post of a Facebook friend a awhile back, querying whether, given the chance, respondents would voluntarily change genders, if they knew that they could change back without any negative repercussions. I didn't just say yeah. I said, hell, yeah! Because you know what? I've been trying to understand how women work, sexually speaking, for more than 35 years now, and I still don't have it all worked out. I mean most of it, sure, and I like to think better than most guys because I'm just curious that way, and stubborn as hell. But still, there is absolutely no way for a male to understand what a female is feeling, much less understand what she's thinking, during that magic dance we call sex. And vice-versa. And that sucks. Doesn't it?

Which brought me to the third bump, which occurred when I was visiting with some gay friends, during which visits we do not discuss sex. Why? You know, I don't really know. I think I would be cool with it. The conversation, I mean. I'm so straight that gays, many of whom I dearly love, are as much a mystery to me as straight women, but I totally get lesbians. How weird is that? Dude, I love women, they love women. Hello? Oops, sidetrack. Anyway, coming out of my visit with these gay friends, I suddenly thought to myself, sort of like the celibate thing, that I could get, from a sexual standpoint, the attraction. Ok, maybe not the attraction, but the compatibility, if that makes sense. I mean, men are all plumbed the same way, and we are S-I-M-P-L-E. I mean, really. And we all feel pretty much the same thing, physiologically. And, because we know what feels good for us, and why, we should be able to, err, relate? Yeah, relate to what a same sex partner is feeling at any point, more than an other sex partner ever could. Ditto women, notwithstanding the fact that women are just way, way more complex, in every way possible.

So, now that we have some background, sex as a currency of exchange, sucks. And yes it is, and everyone knows it is. This was brought triply home the other evening when a friend and I were at a local festival, sans dates or spouses, and were being hit on shamelessly by semi-soused, apparently well-off married women who seemed to have trouble keeping their boobs covered or their hands to themselves. Dudettes, you're married. What is it you're looking for that you don't have at home? Aha, now we're talking sexual market economics - something we can all understand, if we're brave enough. So, are you coming with me?

So, let's say you're walking down the street and somebody walks up and offers you a fistful of rupees or shekels or dinars or won or yen or... You get the drift. You have no clue what its worth. Fortunately, there is a global currency market for global currency. Now let's say that you find yourself nekkid (or not yet, take your time. Enjoy yourself. No hurry...) and you're handed the mission of making your partner feel as good as you possibly can. Yeah, call me crazy if you want, but I've always found the best sex is about giving. But still, we are totally clueless. Effective communication can only occur when there is a point of shared understanding. Now, I know I'm not offering a bunch of answers tonight - you know I much prefer questions. But I will spill a few beans about guys in hope that my lady reader friends might be compelled to reciprocate, thus enlightening the male readership and making the world a happier place for everyone...

First, guys don't want anything for sex. They/we just want sex. And we're really simple that way. This is pretty much always true. Okay, I'm making an assumption regarding my gay friends, but am guessing its not that different. (Damn, I really do need to talk with them about sex, now. Am suddenly curious...hmmm) Anyway, we don't want anything but sex, and we don't think while we're having sex. About anything. Except sex. And sometimes, not even that. Okay, now that I think of it, that's probably an oversimplification. I'm saying sex but am meaning intercourse. If we're doing anything else, we're thinking. A lot. Like, how the hell does this thing work? Like, does she like this? Really like it? Or is she just trying to make me feel good? Does it feel good for her? Should I be going faster? Slower? Harder? Softer? Oh! My!! God!!!

Yes, its true that when partners are together long enough, and if they communicate really well, and if they care, and if they're giving and generous and honest, eventually they learn what works. Hopefully. Or do they? Or do they only learn what they think works, because their partner finally got tired of trying to communicate something that can't really effectively be communicated? No, I'm not the only one who wonders these things. Again, men being simple, women know. The converse is not true...

Is it fair that men are all built pretty much the same? Which, as I mentioned before, is simple. Basic. All out there. We have maybe ten erogenous zones if we're really self-aware, and only care about two or three. Usually the same two or three. Women have about a million, and every woman is different, likes something different, prefers more or less pressure, this or that position, one sequence versus another. And no, we know you're not trying to be difficult. Its just nature's little joke to counterbalance our disgusting simplicity...

Which wouldn't matter, much, really. Except that, as I mentioned before, women use sex as currency, at least much of the time. Sometimes, at rare points and in rare circumstances, they just want sex. More often, they may be trading for something simple like love, or security or a little peace and quiet- if I just give him what he wants maybe he'll go to sleep and let me work on the grocery list. Or it might be for a new car or a diamond ring or a trip to Aruba or marriage until death do us part. Which is generally about security and hopefully about love. The problem is, currency values fluctuate in the real world, and in the sexual world they fluctuate wildly. There's stress and outside pressure and phases of the moon and age-induced physiology changes and maybe you're already married and you've got the diamond ring and you've just gotten back from the trip to Aruba and that's paid for already dammit and leave me alone you clueless clumsy buffoon. And of course these aren't always conscious, so when your partner asks what wrong you may not know and you may tell him so and he may believe you and he may not. And, did I mention, that he's really, really very simple when it comes to sex?

Anyway, here's what I think goes on in the mind of half-soused married women who can't keep their boobs in or their hands to themselves, and in many cases in the minds of their male counterparts as well. I think that maybe, just maybe, they're foolishly hoping to recreate somehow that perfect experience they had once upon a time but haven't in a long time when with they were with someone they were in love with and hopelessly attracted to, and the setting was right, and the circumstances perfect, and the timing ideal, and everyone in the game pushed all the right buttons in all the right sequences with all the right pressure for just the right intervals, and they swore they'd "slipped the surly bonds of earth." The perfect sexual encounter resulting in the most spectacular of orgasms and afterglows and fireworks and rainbows and bluebirds singing afterward. And it took two days for that cramp in their toes to work itself out...

Alcohol, I'm afraid, does not make fantasies come true...

Disclaimer: I've been married for almost thirty years, probably have as good a sex life as any of the few couples I know who've made it as far as we have. So no, hon, this isn't about you. Now come back to bed, you silly thing...

What's love got to do with it?

2010-04-03T18:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, I told everyone last week that I would blog on this topic this week. And I was kind of sort of onto a good plot last week and might be tomorrow, but I just spent 4 straight hours on my less than fancy schmancy bike, and I'm sore and not thinking too clearly. I did have a few thoughts on the topic while riding, however, so will share them with you. And yes, I know, haiku isn't done in stanzas. These aren't stanzas - they're separate haiku. If you feel like putting them together, I can't stop you, and am frankly too tired to try.

Happy Passover, Easter, Nowruz, Holi or whatever you celebrate this season. But by all means, celebrate something!

Second Chances
Great meeting last night
Talk turned to second chances
Glad that I got mine

Spring Ride
Riding by the stream
Children laugh at diving fowl
Spring flowers dancing

Passover
Late Seder feast
Noodle Kugel, Matzoh balls
Family thankful

Love
People often ask
What has love to do with it?
I say, "I don't know."

Truth in (political) Labeling

2010-03-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

Today I attended the second local organizing meeting of a burgeoning effort called the Coffee Party Movement, which has as its primary stated objective. "Giving (sic) voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government." And yet, with all the vitriol, yelling and name calling going on from the nation's capital to the local courthouse, I believe this daunting task nearly impossible in the current environment. This situation is made worse by the meaningless labels of "Republican" or "Democrat," which are only slightly less confusing than "independent" or "conservative" or "progressive, or "liberal," or...

In seeking advice in preparation for this post, a friend quoted Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard to me: “Once you label me, you negate me.” I don't agree with this sentiment on several levels, with the main one being that we can only negate ourselves. But certainly, labeling is a tactic that antagonists use to try to diminish or negate their opponents, and labels are certainly rife in today's political shouting match. Worse yet, many, if not most of us, adopt various labels with no idea what many of them mean, or with whom we might be aligning ourselves by virtue of donning this or that "uniform."

I am not a fan of labeling, but am a big proponent of both self-knowledge and intelligent discourse. For that reason, I think it is very beneficial to try and understand the true meaning of certain labels, and which, if any, might reasonably apply to us. Only when we have a good understanding of where we stand personally on any axis, and have an objective means by which to locate others, can we accurately understand our relationship at the outset, and formulate our communications and interactions in a way that might have a meaningful impact. Assuming that we're not speaking just to thrill at the sound of our own voices...

In the course of a professional development training recently, I was exposed to a book titled The Platinum Rule, by a well known business communications professional named Tony Alessandra. While I'm not a fan of these self-help, sales-excellence books or gurus, this one had a fascinating slant that I found quite compelling. The premise, if it is not self-evident, is a play on "the golden rule," which we all knows directs us to treat others as we would want to be treated ourselves. Alessandra suggests that, while laudable, this is an ego driven construct, as it rests on the assumption that the other is like us, or wants what we want. His "Platinum Rule" suggests that we consider not "as we would want to be treated," but as he or she would want to be treated. Not the same thing, in many cases, by a long shot. So...

Alessandra, being a PhD., highly compensated author, motivational speaker, marketing consultant, and generally big-time mucky muck, developed a cute personality quiz which will land you, unless you're some sort of freak, in one of four quadrants, assign to you primary and secondary characteristics, and then direct you on how to most effectively interact with others who fall in various spots on the grid. From work we've done within our small group, I would rate it in the high-80th percentile for accuracy in plotting the subject on the graph. I am way too dense to speak to how accurate his prescriptions and proscriptions are regarding recommended modes of interaction. I do know he makes damn good money doing what he does, for what that's worth...

I, on the other hand, being a regular old schmuck with no letters after my name, am only going to try to draw a virtual graph of sorts that I find useful, and hope that some of my readers might find at least mildly interesting. I am going to limit this treatment to political labels, as that is the backdrop against which so much of today's angst is played out, and where I spend admittedly way too much of my own time and energy. I would recommend that you not spend much time or effort trying to plot anyone else other than yourself on the graph. If you don't know where you are, its pretty useless to try and find value in assessing the distance from or proximity to anyone else. I have many friends and associates who claim that they cannot be labeled, but I believe this is only true of someone with no principles, beliefs, or convictions. Not wanting to be labeled? Well, that's another story entirely...

The theory here is to define polar opposites on several axes that correspond to the most commonly used and misused labels, or to those we would prefer to use. You are free to accept or dismiss my definitions, but I have tried, as possible and unless otherwise noted, to use common currently accepted definitions, recognizing that there are historical differentiations, particularly as regards liberalism. As we define each of these I set them to the side to be arranged later - will explain my personal arrangement preference and rationale shortly:

Libertarian vs. Progressive: Starting from the simplest and working our way forward, libertarians generally support the rights of the individual over the rights of government or the state, and consider government generally oppressive and largely unnecessary. Progressives, on the other hand, having arisen in the early 20th century in response to the ravages visited on the working class by industrialization and the age of the robber barons, believes that government should be strong and vibrant in protecting the rights of individuals against more powerful moneyed interests. I start with these two because in a real sense and in a purely political analysis, these two have the greatest dichotomy, are the clearest polar opposites, and in many ways are the primary agents to creating the most unbridgeable divide between our citizens. Libertarians believe in every man for himself in virtually every aspect of life, whereas progressives believe in using government to protect the weaker from the more powerful, and to do so in a very direct and heavy-handed manner, when necessary. Interestingly, very few Americans, proportionately, identify themselves as either libertarian or progressive. That's a shame in my view...

Populist vs. Corporatist: Here are a couple more labels that you don't much hear used but which I would argue are more applicable to the modern political mindset than frequency of usage would suggest. While these words have held different meanings historically, populism in its purist sense is a political philosophy favoring the primacy of the individual - with almost total focus on the working class. While officially labeled populism in the U.S. was generally considered an agrarian phenomenon, its worker-based focus should have but did not transfer to the modern U.S. economy when the workers moved from farm to factory during and following World War II. Corporatism is the philosophy that favors organizational and particularly large business interests over the individual worker, best embodied by the 1953 statement of then GM Chairman Charles Erwin Wilson, "What's good for General Motors is good for America." It was countered by President Dwight Eisenhower's prophetic speech only days before he left office in 1961, when he warned, "...we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." I do wish he'd broadened his brush a bit, but we are all creatures of our times. I believe that most contemporary Americans, particularly in light of the recent catastrophic economic downturn, believe in their guts, if not in their minds, that this corporatist system is in fact the system we're living under now, where heavily moneyed business interest control the levers of political machinery. I also believe that there are few who would self label themselves corporatists, but many who should...

Secular vs. Religious: At the extremes, someone who defines themselves as totally secular in their political mindset is generally either a non-believer, or a strident adherent to Jefferson's "wall of separation" between search and state. The counterpart is the self described religiously focused voter who is totally comfortable having his or her religious beliefs dictate political activity. It is important to note that there is a growing movement among religious liberals to adopt this mindset, and, conversely, that it is dangerous for those on "the left" to assume that because someone is secular in their mindset that they will be liberal or progressive in their political activities. One need look no further than Ayn Rand and her modern day followers to recognize the validity of this observation.

Globalist vs. Nationalist: This one isn't intuitive to the average American, yet most of us have a very strong sense of where we stand on this axis, and it is one which can often serve as a bridge when the others seem hopeless. The pure globalist has very little sentiment for the nation itself - can hold respect for structure, historical accomplishments, culture, etc., but places all of the world and all of humanity at the top of the ladder, and the individual nation or citizenry at the foot. Conversely, the nationalist, which also title themselves "patriots," have a strong sense of exceptionalism - see their/our nation as superior to or apart from others, and are as often as not unwilling to emulate other cultures or systems due to this innate pride.

Liberal vs. Conservative: I leave this pair of labels until last because they are the most commonly used and abused, and certainly the most subject to manipulation and demonizing. For purposes of this discussion, we will consider these only in their fiscal implications. The economic liberal favors aggressive government spending and fiscal policy to achieve societal reforms and governmental objectives. Liberal tactics include protectionism, progressive taxation, and free government spending on education, health care and other government programs. Fiscal and economic conservatives, on the other hand, favor lower and flatter taxation, business friendly tax policies, and minimal governmental expenditures on non-essential programs. Of course in both cases the devil is in the details. For instance, conservative policies which favor larger business can be very damaging to smaller businesses, while liberal policies designed to favor individuals and small businesses over larger businesses might have the effect of driving down wages or employment.

Admittedly, this is only a very superficial gloss of descriptions and a minimal set of characteristics. There are other axes that can be developed, and some of mine are less developed than others (speaking to my personal biases in some cases and lack of deeper knowledge in others.) In any event, now that we're all worn out and our heads hurt, why did I put us through all this? I would hope the answer is fairly simple to see. Far too many of us, first of all, use a few simple labels - usually "liberal" or "conservative," or worse yet, Democrat or Republican, to pigeonhole ourselves and others, failing to consider the reality that in so doing we in fact marginalize ourselves and our understanding of them, rendering the likelihood of productive discourse nearly impossible. Life and humans are complex, no less so in the political realm than in others. If we would, in the political context, consider applying the more complex model suggested above, I believe in many cases we would find that we have many more commonalities than the current model allows. And in identifying these areas of commonality, we are recognizing an opportunity to open a respectful dialogue and humanize the individual which we are otherwise inclined to demonize and label as unworthy of our efforts.

Finally, I would encourage all to consider utilizing the model suggested above on/for yourselves, adding such other axes as you might deem valid, and arranging them like the spokes on a wheel, with the intersection being at zero and values graduating symmetrically outward. My Taoist friend Steve might well argue that the perfectly (politically) balanced participant would be all zeroes, but I'm doubtful anyone would actually strike such a result. If we listen actively and respectfully to others with whom we converse, and apply as we gain information the same model to them, we will find in most cases some axes on which we are nearer to them in our political disposition. In some instances the points will be so diametrically opposed in all areas that there is no potential point of entrance, but these cases should be rare. The ones on which we are nearest are the ones on which we might start a dialogue that allows for humanizing instead of demonizing, respect instead of disdain, comity instead of antagonism. I'm going to try it, and will let you know how it goes.

And for those who care, my model rendered me a secular populist, with moderate liberal/progressive and slightly stronger globalist leanings. And yes, just a hair left of center. Who'd have thunk it?

Hodgepodge...

2010-03-20T13:55:00.001-07:00

Yes, I'm late. So shoot me already. Jeesh!

When I got up this morning I had a pretty good concept for today's post. It totally flew out the door by about midway through this morning's AA meeting. Had a group of youngsters from some rehab facility attending their first meeting. Youngest couldn't have been more than 12 years old. Wow! Really rocked me, and I sensed a lot of others in the room. Great that he's learning so early that the program is there for him, and today's was an exceptionally good meeting. But so sad that a youngster could be in that much trouble that early in life. I turned to the fellow next to me and said, "Now that really makes me want to go kick someone's ass." And it did. Oldest kid was probably 16 and I could tell at least a few were brothers. Parents are as likely as not crack-heads, and its really their parents or maybe the previous generation whose butts should be kicked. Except all of them, and us, and me - we're all sick, and spend about half our time kicking our own asses anyway - some by drinking and drugging. In the end, everyone gets what's coming to them. That's karma...

Had a sit down afterward with a fellow I'd met some weeks back but never really had a chance to visit. We'd confirmed that we were both, err...shall we say, "non-traditional" in our belief systems? And I knew that would be the focus of our visit. Having been in the program nine months now, I've developed a comfort level with the interesting juxtaposition of my non-deistic belief system with the semi-overtly Christian overtone of the AA program, at least here in Texas. I am guessing that it may be a bit less overt in California or Boston, but am not certain...

We ran through our histories with addiction and spirituality, and confirmed once again that there are many paths to every destination. He has been in the program for more than 20 years, came in a rabid atheist, and is now, I would say, pretty Buddhist in his mindset, although this wasn't something he really recognized in himself. He said that I was the first person he can recall who started on the spiritual path, then found his way into AA, which made me feel kind of special. I mean, I knew it was an uncommon route, but have long since dismissed the notion that any ideas or paths are really original. Nonetheless, the non-suppressed ego likes to think there's something special about itself. So I will indulge myself lightly...

My non-traditional path into the program is one of the reasons I am pretty reluctant to share my thoughts on spirituality in meetings that take that bent in discussion, and I explained this to him. I don't really want to proselytize my belief system, at least in that setting. These are fellow travelers on the path of recovery for whom life and death hangs in the balance, supported by their having a strong belief system. Given that I can't prove mine right or theirs wrong, I am very reluctant to sow the seeds of doubt into the structure they've built by exposing them to an alien, although admittedly to some, quite compelling, approach. Better, I think, to wait for the curious, like my lunch companion, to make themselves known and ask. At least that's my approach, and I feel good with it. Of course, my therapist would say that its arrogant of me to think that I could knock the hinge pins loose from someone else's belief system, and maybe it is. Not a a risk or responsibility I care to shoulder at this juncture...

I know I have friends within my readership in the program, some of whom share my non-deistic eastern spiritual focus. Would love some feedback on this. And I've discussed with my sponsor on a couple of occasions our shared notion that there are likely a goodly number of atheist, agnostic, Wiccan and other non-traditional believer addicts who wander into the "wrong" AA or other 12-Step meeting on the wrong day and get hit with a too heavy dose of prayer, and a god called "Him," and the whole powerlessness thing, and turn around and hit the streets again for another day or month or year or lifetime. Kind of bums me out, ya know? My first visit to an AA meeting room, probably 15 years ago, was exactly that experience and had exactly that effect. And I'm not such a big believer in the whole karma thing to buy into the notion that for me, or those other disenchanted visitors, that in every instance it was just not their time. Of course for me, it really wasn't - didn't have a problem and had no interest in quitting. Just went to shut the wife up and get her off my ass. Yes, that stage of my trek was very traditional...

To get back on track, the program's success isn't really about God, but about spirituality and humility. If God is part of that for you, that's super. But a belief in the caring compassionate interventionist Judeo-Christian God is not a requirement for success. Having some power higher than, and other than, yourself that you believe in and rely on? That is definitely a requirement. I often say that I'm not nearly so certain that there's a higher power as I am that there's no lower power than me. Insignificant human occupying an insignificant planet in an insignificant solar system for an insignificant micro-fraction of an instant, against the universe which is infinite in time and space and its myriad manifestations. How much less significant can I be? I mean, we're getting to the same place vis-a-vis higher vs. lower, but from a different perspective that some find a little less threatening...

Which approach was a little confusing to my lunch companion, as he knows that I participate in the Lord's Prayer at the end of every meeting, linked hand in hand with the addict to the right and left of me (lady's hand on my right today was really cold, which is rare - for someone's hands to be colder than mine, I mean...) I explained that I had been raised saying the Lord's Prayer, and felt that my joining in with the group was supporting the group, the vast majority of whom believe in a God that hears and answers prayers. He, on the other hand, not believing in the God who hears and answers prayers, but in some other God, which he described as non-interventionist, yet which/who somehow made a habit of intervening in a positive way, doesn't join in the prayer (but does join hands). He feels that saying words you don't believe somehow dishonors him or something. Different viewpoints, neither right nor wrong in my view. His approach does attract attention,which lead to our lunch date and new friendship. And it is honest. Hmmm, will have to ponder...

Which made me start to share with him my reluctance to say the Pledge of Allegiance, which was real and heartfelt for the longest time. Part of it was based on the whole "under God" thing, but equally I felt it was really a lie all the way through. I mean, "One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Really? The only words in the whole string which aren't lies are the prepositions, for God's sake! And this was more than a little bit difficult, seeing that for a while I was an elected official and every meeting opened with the Pledge. What was I to do? It wasn't my job to upset my constituents or to educate them on philosophy, theology, metaphysics, etc. My job was to keep them calm and represent their secular interests as related to municipal government. I worked my way through by mouthing the words (so it looked ok on cable television) and later was able to reach the point where I could say the whole thing, except for the "under God" bit. How? I finally read the damn thing through, parsing it like a lawyer,until I got comfortable with the notion that I wasn't pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth, nor to the nation as it exists, but to the ideal "for which it stands." Hey, worked for me...

So, prayer lying bad, pledge lying ok? Vice-a-versa? All lying bad? "Have you seen my wife lately?" Saw her in the lobby of a hotel downtown getting into an elevator holding hands with a man that wasn't you...

Sometimes life really is just like a box of chocolates. Thanks, Forest. I believe I will...

Oh, and kid. Keep coming back, ya hear?

Legacy...

2010-03-13T04:41:00.000-08:00

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
~Henry David Thoreau~

So, my therapist asked me, yet again, what it was that I was so afraid of. And I responded, once again, that my greatest fear seems to be insignificance. Weird, huh? I mean, when one believes in heaven and hell and cherubim and seraphim, or in the unending wheel of life and lives, what transpires in this one may not be a big deal. But, when your life philosophy consists of "you're born, you live, you die," things in the here and now take on a certain immediacy and relevance that is inescapable and can be a bit weighty at times. Hence my, what? Intensity? I've been accused of that trait, and think it fits...

However, my eastern teachings instruct me to live fully in the moment, and my intellect tells me this is indeed all we can do. And my recovery program tells me that the two primary motivators of any addict are fear and resentment. By definition, fears are of the future and resentments of the past, so what generates our destructive behaviors is very much a failure to live in the moment. Nah, I'm not really more complicated than anyone else. I just think too much...

The mission, of course, is to lose the ego, that artificial construct of self that is the repository for shame, fear, pride, ambition, avarice, and so forth. As we move closer to this goal, we see that we are part of something larger, and larger yet - a family, a community, a race, a species, an ecosystem, a solar system, a universe. How significant can I or anyone else expect to be in light of this realization. Crazy, huh?

So I thought I'd run off a quick inventory of significant accomplishments little old insignificant I have accomplished, to refer back to whenever I start beating on myself for living a meaningless life...

I have two wonderful children who are my pride and joy, who seem to have absorbed what few good traits I have and precious few of the bad, which are legion. While it looks at this juncture as though they may choose not to propagate (a position I held at their ages as well), they will touch many lives during the course of theirs, and what they've learned will be passed on in ways great and small. I read somewhere recently a saying, "You don't fully die until everyone who has known you, or who has known those who knew you knew you have died." I like that thought a lot...
I have been married for almost 30 years to a very patient woman. I have been a pretty shitty mate in a lot of ways (alcoholism not being an enhancement to any partnership), but we have managed what more than half of couples don't, and have added to each others lives more than we've taken away. I'm not proud of many of the things I've done, but am of this accomplishment and of the fact that, as husbands go, I've been a pretty damn good one...
I've involved myself in my various communities effectively - serving on commissions and committees and as an elected official. I think now, looking back, that much of this was really driven more by ego than by a true sense of service, but I comported myself well in these instances regardless of the motivation, and enhanced the lives and efforts of those I served. Lesson - you can do the right thing for the wrong reasons.
I've learned and taught through my actions both advocacy and the value of persistence. This has been mostly in the political arena, stretching back I now realize more than 25 years. I involved myself in local politics when my eldest was still an infant, helping chase religious proselytizers off the public school campuses, fighting developers encroaching on our private property rights, helping elect school board members, and later fighting for the rights to fair and responsible representation in partisan battles. I know that my words and actions inspired others to act, to become more involved, to establish organizations and to run for and serve in office. I have actually played a significant role in changing laws from the local to the federal level, including petition/referendum regulations here in Texas and campaign finance regulations at the federal level. And many of these accomplishments were achieved through efforts that on their face were failures...
And many more accomplishments large and small that I've not dredged up and wouldn't bore you with anyway, today. Little helps, assists, likes and loves, lessons learned and taught and lost. One could become obsessed with taking inventory. I shan't..

The moral of today's saga, then, is really pretty simple. The only way one's life can have no significance is if one doesn't live it. The more we live our life, the more significant it will be. The more we interact with others, touch their lives and allow them to touch ours, the more firmly and durably enmeshed in the fabric of existence we become. I have beat myself up too much, I know, characterizing myself as a rock sitting inert on the shore of a pond. In reality, I have been a veritable handful of gravel, flinging myself (or flung by an unseen hand) to hit the surface of the pond of life in myriad spots and in varying weights and at multiple trajectories to set off more ripples and waves than I can possibly imagine. How many ripples, where they go, what they touch? These don't really matter. Its hitting the water that matters...

So, I am recommitting to my quest to abandon my ego, to live in the present moment, and to stop allowing my fears and resentments to dictate my actions. And, somehow, I am going to get my appropriately insignificant self realigned to serve for the sake of serving, to live for the sake of living, to love for the sake of loving, and to leave the seeking of fame and glory to others. All of these will be new experiences for me, and I can only do them in the present. Sounds like quite an adventure. Will keep you posted...

Oh, and, lest you worry that I spend too much time scouting around my bizzaro mind and variegated soul, I would remind you that my old friend Socrates famously said,"The unexamined life is not worth living," to which I've taken the liberty of adding, "...and the unlived life is not worth examining."

Namaste...

Coffee, Tea, or Texas?

2010-03-06T05:36:00.000-08:00

Warning - this post may contain language that is offensive to some readers. If it makes you feel any better, its offensive to me, too!

This was a momentous week in many ways, but mostly political. The Texas primaries were on Tuesday, and the much vaunted battle between Texas senior Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Gov. Rick "Goodhair" Perry ended with a fizzle rather than a bang. Very disappointing. And the fact that my favorite, that whacked out wild woman from Wharton, Deborah Medina of Tea Party fame, garnered less than 20 percent, was doubly disappointing. I had great hopes that the Tea Party activists would be more effective than they've proven to be in driving a stake into the heart of the ossifying but still sharp-fanged Republican Party here in Texas and the south. Alas, it is not to be. They are indeed nothing more than I feared they were from the outset - a screaming gaggle of angry underclass whites afraid of the clean articulate black man who has taken up residence in the White House, and of socialism, which ceased being a threat to America almost two decades ago. Ah, well...

This election year is a big deal, though. At least to me. I have said for a good while now that I don't expect to grow old and retire and die here in Texas. My home state is a land of hate-filled, racist, Bible-thumping fundamentalists who revel in their ignorance and revile the educated. It is certainly a recipe for success for the likes of Perry, but disaster for my children and theirs, should they choose to have them. I heard a comment somewhere this week that not only do conservatives hold to the notion that the earth is 6,000 years old, but that the the dinosaurs were on the ark with Noah, his merry crew, and the lions and tigers and bears. Oh my! And for those of you who don't live here, let me tell you that is absolutely plausible (that people here believe it - not that its true.) We have some of the worst air in the nation, and Perry has sued the EPA to keep them from cleaning it up. Yes, really!

The worst part is that I once loved Texas with undying devotion. My childhood was idyllic - living on the edge of the suburbs, riding my bike or friends' horses out into the countryside for hours on end, playing kick-the-can until it was too dark to see on summer evenings, chasing fireflies which were always in abundance back then, playing sandlot baseball and football back on the field we constructed on the Cloud farm over the barbed wire fence that initially demarcated our property. Being the only Catholic in the neighborhood, I didn't get to enjoy the heady experience of Vacation Bible School or church camp, but we scouted and played sports together with the Baptists and Church of Christers (called themselves "Christians," I think)

Nigger jokes were more common than Aggie jokes back then, and I only had the slightest twangs of conscience when my playmates would heckle good-natured old Arthur, an older black fellow who used to walk up and down our block on the way to and from the bus stop every day. Not knowing where he lived but knowing now the bus routes, am guessing he had at least a two mile walk each way. "Hey Arthur," our oldest and most racist neighbor would shout. "Why take the bus? Wouldn't you rather drive a Fal-coon?" Guffaw. (For those too tender in years, the Ford Falcon was one of the workhorses of the fleet - we went through two in my family - great cars. And coon was a pejorative term for African-Americans probably pretty well gone now, except in east Texas and maybe Mississippi...)

Anyway, you get the drift. Nobody in Texas would have dared question a single word of the Bible aloud back then. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was the outrage of the day, and I do remember her name being bandied about, although I was only six or seven when that evil woman got prayer kicked out of schools. It was probably about the same time that I actually met face-to-face my first black child. My brother and I were playing on the nickel merry-go-round in front of Piggly Wiggly when a cute black kid about our age showed up and started talking and playing with us. I don't remember the details of the incident very well, only that at some point my brother and I were fighting about something, which was the norm, and one of us called the other a nigger, which was also quite usual. Except we'd never met a black other than Arthur, and had never uttered the word in front of one. I don't really remember the upshoot of the incident - there were no adults to witness, I know. I'm pretty sure we were more shocked than our black playmate. I vividly recall being mortified - know that it sunk in and that from that point on that I was never comfortable with the word. I'm sure I used it some after, and know I tolerated others doing so a lot, but am also certain I was one of the first in my group to develop an aversion and ultimately revoke the word that was as common among us as peanut butter in my youth...

Lest you think I digress, let me assure you that if you found yourself in a group of the most rabid Perry supporters - God fearing, Bible revering, secessionist patriotic Texans, discussions of which genus and species of dinosaur bunked on the promenade deck of Noah's cruise ship and was tended to by the nicest little nigger or colored boy would raise nary an eyebrow. Particularly once they were comfortable they were amongst their own and not going to be overheard by any of those pointy head college educated liberal elitists. And if they were willing to engage a discussion on the improbability of this scenario, the argument would focus on our obvious misunderstanding of the term "cubit," rather than any question of the possibility that the universe or the earth might be a single day older than Genesis allows, or that mammals and dinosaurs coexisted right up to the big rain. Yep, welcome to Texas.

Truth told, the fact that we elected Bush twice has already soured me almost as much on the whole country as I am on Texas right now. I once said I would live and die in Texas - was actually disciplined in boot camp for refusing to mow bluebonnets - in Missouri! I was Texan first, human being second, American third. Yep, I really said that! Regularly. As a soldier in Uncle Sam's army. Hmmm...

But I've made a vow to myself now that, should Perry be re-elected Governor (he's already the longest serving governor in Texas' history), I will be packing my bags and skedaddling. So yes, I am disappointed in my Tea Party candidates not doing better and expediting the demise of the GOP in Texas. I'm disappointed in Hutchison running such a lame campaign and putting up such a pitiful fight that the resultant damage isn't nearly what it might have been. And I'm sorry that Medina and her teabagging brethren didn't pull off at least a few upsets, which might have kept them in the game a while longer and further muddied the waters. As it is, they'll be like the Perotistas, who voted first in '92 and last in '96 and were never heard from again. Good riddance, I suppose...

On the upside, the Democrats did nominate Bill White by an overwhelming majority, and he is absolutely the strongest gubernatorial candidates we've fielded since the late great Ann Richards back in the early 90s. It was sad and humorous and telling again of Texas, that Palestinian-American Farouk Shami, a billionaire hair-care magnate, threw his hat in the ring, along with a fair amount of cash, and was appropriately trounced by White. Shami, whose family arrived here from Palestine about the same time my nigger tales above were playing out, spoke English very poorly for someone here for more than four decades, an issue with more than a few Democrats and Independents I talked to. And in that period of time, while he may be a godsend to women and their lovely tresses, he obviously absorbed zero understanding of Texas, Texans, or our racist culture. An east Texas Democratic county chair was widely and vehemently excoriated for telling Shami the undeniable truth, which was that it will be a cold day in hell before Texans will elect a brown-skinned man with a first name of Farouk or last name of Shami. Dude, what were you thinking?

So, at the reception following the funeral I attended this afternoon, I had a chance to visit at some length with very successful GOP political consultant who runs state House and Congressional campaigns for candidates on the dark side. He is a good guy and honest, and I'll not expose him. He did tell me, though, that he thought Perry would be unbeatable - a money magnet and the consummate campaigner. He loves campaigning and the fight, and has excellent instincts. Hutchison should be able to attest to that. Once she gets out of ICU...

And he also told me I had every right to be afraid. The mysterious "they," who he would never reveal, are indeed grooming Perry for a step up to the big time. Yes, this would be the same crew, I'm sure, responsible for the eight years of hell we suffered under 43. As my confidante said, you might not just be packing to go out of state, but out of the country.

Sorry, friends, but I've been in Texas too long. Bill White aside, I don't know of anyone in the leadership of the Texas Democratic Party that has the foggiest idea regarding either organization or winning. We've done nothing but shoot ourselves in the foot and get our asses kicked all over this glorious piece of real estate for more than two decades now. I'll keep fighting as long as I can, and hoping against hope. But am going to be picking up a copy of the Rosetta Stone just in case...

Oh, and as a quick note to close the loop on today's title, there is a new group arising on the bright side of the aisle, humorously titled The Coffee Party. I just found out about them last week, have joined, and encourage all of you to at least check it out. Their stated focus is on "civil discourse," which sounds all sappy and kumbaya and whatnot. I am developing the impression, however, that there are some very solid folks coming to the fore in this movement, and that it might actually turn into something meaningful. And while these folks are in some cases angry, they are articulate, educated, focused and dedicated to bringing about the sort of change so many of us worked for in 2008, and which has frankly come up lacking thus far. Not least due to the incivility and shouting from the other side.

Almost Feral...

2010-02-26T20:25:00.000-08:00

We'll be pretty short this week, I think. It's been a long rough one in the capitalist jungle, and I'm feeling rather ragged. The economy's been rough for a lot of folks in a lot of places for a long time. This week the hard times came precariously close to home, and my animal side came dangerously close to taking over...

We all knew it was coming. Not exactly what or when, but you can't keep suffering the losses we've been suffering in my small firm month after month without something finally giving. About 30% of our work force was laid off, totally without warning, which is the norm for my industry. Too much dangerously sensitive information in play to risk a disgruntled soon-to-be ex-employee wreaking havoc. Still when the axe falls that quickly and brutally, it leaves everyone on edge. "Could have been me..." Yep, could have been...

Those of us most senior had been given about 24 hours notice of generally what was coming, without any details or identification of the victims. We all gathered together and had a big kumbaya about how we were going to pull together, work harder and smarter as a team, and fight our way through the firestorm. All for one and one for all. Bosses and minions all doing their best, pulling their share of the load. Right? Right...

Within 24 hours my superior decided to push a point that had been a burr between us for some time - technically a violation of procedures but one which might have been left resting for the time being, given the tensions of the moment and the fact that I am currently the top producer in the firm. I countered by confronting him in, shall we say, less than diplomatic fashion. It was the corporate capitalist version of two wild dogs snarling at each other over a steaming scrap of carrion, fangs bared and jowls dripping saliva, hackles raised and eyes blazing. He, the old and faltering alpha in this case, chose not to press the fight at that point, so it was left to fester. And all undetectable by the casual observer, but we both knew. Today we went back to circling and growling, but no real attacks and no blood drawn. We are dozens of miles apart over the weekend, both cooling off and headed toward some peaceful resolution in the new week, hopefully. If not, I may be blogging more regularly soon and for a bit...

I have only in a few instances in my life been under such physical threat that I hackled up and got the blood lust. Most civilized people in this and other industrialized countries can make it all the way through their lives without ever having that experience, unless they're in the military or law enforcement or have the misfortune of tangling with violent criminals. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of the experience, although I am afraid of the person I become, and would prefer to not go there again...

Which is why this week's confrontation frightened me. I am a great appreciator of the efficiency of capitalism, a system I find myself detesting more and more each passing year. But I've been here before, in not dissimilar circumstances. On more than one occasion in times past, this visceral physical or near physical response to a threat to my livelihood has been an instantaneous one. While I don't much enjoy working for a living, and wouldn't as I do if I didn't have others depending on me, the idea that I can respond with physical and near physical aggression over mere economic matters is frightening to me, and more than a little disheartening. I've worked fairly hard to better myself, to have a more spiritual and compassionate approach to living - have never held any sentimentality for workers "going postal" or wackos flying small planes into IRS offices. And yet here, the slightest threat to the meager livelihood with which I help provide for my family, and I'm nearly dagger drawn.

The saving grace, from an economic and employment standpoint, is that the boss doesn't know how close the call was, and in truth I suppose I should be proud that I was able to conceal and control as well as I did. Had I actually acted out what I felt and scarcely contained, it is possible I would be incarcerated and he hospitalized. I would absolutely be unemployed. I would like to write it off to the tension of the week's events, the lying and dissembling of the Republicans in Washington, the phases of the moon. But I know better. My children have told me on more than one occasion that I can be scary. Sometimes I scare me too. And I don't like it anymore...

Decisions, decisions...

2010-02-20T04:53:00.000-08:00

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

From "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, Interval 1920

One of the first lessons I learned in my recovery program was that the two driving forces behind every addict's disease are fear and resentment. The outward manifestations might be anger, aggression, sadness or melancholy, promiscuity, belligerence or excessive boisterousness, but these two simple drivers make the addict's engine run. I've run across nothing in the intervening months to make me question the validity of this postulate.

Active addicts are infamous for our indecision about anything other than feeding their addiction. We fear making the wrong decision, trapping ourselves somehow, selecting a course that will eliminate all other possibilities. We fear choosing a course that will bring us pain, or hurt those we care about. Some get so hung up in these fears that they lose touch with reality - there is a reason that mental illness and addictions are so often connected.

And we addicts resent, in addition to real and imagined transgressions against us in the past, those few decisions we did make that didn't turn out as we hoped, or, more often, decisions we didn't make, leaving us, looking through our fun-house fractured prisms, living in a spot seemingly not of our choosing, that we don't like, and that we can't see our way out of. Healthy people find themselves in these same spots and situations, but generally find a healthy way beyond the snag. Sometimes not, in which case we hope you'll join us at a meeting when you're ready...

By the way, the transgressions against us that are real are worth exploring. This is true for everyone - addicts and non-addicts alike. The news of the day is Tiger Woods' pseudo apology pseudo press conference on Friday. For what it's worth,I do believe he's sorry - about equally for his transgressions against his family and for being caught, err...stupid. I do believe that sex addiction is a real malady, but with less of the chemical component than drugs or alcohol. Probably more on line with kleptomania or gambling or shopping addictions. Point being, all of these behaviors, regardless of the chemical component, are unhealthy and often pathological responses to past experiences...

And Tiger Woods, for all his fame and glory, had one pretty fucked up childhood. Maybe not as bad as Michael Jackson or Danny Bonaduce or some other celebrity kids who are pressed too hard too young, but bad enough. We hosted some young golfers at a youth tournament Tiger played in when he was 14. These kids were 17 or so if I recall, and scared to death of him. Here was this robotic superhuman black kid kicking butt in a white man's sport, with controlling manipulative parents driving every aspect of the show. No pressure on anyone there. Children who are not allowed to be children, and in Tiger's case not allowed to develop normal relationships with other children and those of the opposite gender, will wind up with behavioral problems. He is not the first celebrity who counter-balanced his seemingly superhuman public self-control with theoretically private and unbelievably destructive behavior. That he chose to act his out with some pretty skanky ass women, many of questionable repute, seems the classic enactment of the Madonna-Whore complex, which is not one generated by a healthy upbringing. In this analogy, by the way, the Madonna would be either his wife or perhaps his mother. So...

Enough about my golf idol. I hope he makes it back, and soon. I'll still use golf as my Saturday afternoon nap inducer, with or without him. Without him, though, I don't usually last more than 10 minutes, vs. the 30 or so I can usually keep my eyes open when he's on his game. Its all bout me, ya know?

The opening quote was about paths taken and not taken, and we discussed decisions, fears and regrets. Again, I think that there's not much difference in the life experiences of healthy folks and addicts. We all have victories and defeats, fears and resentments. The difference is that the active addict drinks or drugs to run away from them, while the healthy person confronts and deals with them, sets them aside, and moves on with life. There's a middle ground, too,where most folks live on the bell curve of healthy functionality. In this segment, the actor as often as not compartmentalizes life traumas, at least temporarily, in a way that allows them to generally operate normally without developing destructive behaviors. Some are fortunate enough to make it out of this life without ever having to deal with these traumas or suffer any measurable damaging effect. Others are able to pull them out at various intervals and deal with them one by one in a timely and healthy manner, growing stronger through introspection, understanding and increased self-awareness. Others might well have the trauma manifest itself suddenly or damagingly at some point, seemingly with no specific trigger. This is why we have shrinks...

My shrink told me that the average human life runs something like this: Our first 25 years or so, our parents screw us up big time, owing largely to the reality that children don't come with instructions. The second 25 years or so we live the effects of this upbringing, settle into our place on the aforementioned bell-curve of mental health, and as often as not go about fucking up our own kids who, amazingly, also arrive without instructions. Somewhere around mid-life, the toxic waste of the first segment, as often as not, begins leaching up to the surface and manifesting itself in ways large and small. For the handful who are self-aware from an early age, lucky enough to have been raised by insightful and generous parents, and who have dealt with life's experiences fully and completely as they arrived, they continue on their steady and generally satisfying path. We all know folks like this, although not many, and envy them deeply. Don't. Envy is ugly and unproductive, and leads to resentment, which leads to...

For those in the middle (of the population and of life), this can be an interesting or depressing time. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation." I think that this describes well a significant majority of those in the middle of the bell curve, and virtually all of those on the active addict side. I have a vision on the periphery of my mind of a poem or movie or television episode or painting or some-such, can't pull it up right now - of armies of gray men with briefcases and fedoras marching listlessly through the hum-drum of modern industrialized life. Like the Japanese "salaryman," you know? None of us know one of those previously mentioned enviable people who fit this mold, do we? I know I don't. But I know a fair bunch like this in the middle, and a lot on the active addict side, marching listlessly through life, feeling trapped by decisions they did and didn't make. This is the segment and period in which suicides go up, divorces happen, addictions manifest themselves or are exacerbated. But this is also the time where many find spirituality (real and imagined), set aside destructive behaviors and take up healthy ones, make radical changes in lifestyle or career to take control over lives that prior seemed to be controlling us. Welcome to my world...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way." Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Decisions, decisions... I've said before and will say again, that where we are at any instant of our lives is the aggregate of the circumstances we've been exposed to and the decisions we've made in response to those circumstances. Based on that viewpoint, and on decisions I've made in the past year or so, here's what I know about me today: (1) I will not stand still, for I would die. (2) I will not go back, because I cannot. (3) I will not let life dictate to me, because I refuse to be a victim. (4) I will not fear the future nor resent the past, because neither are productive.

These are all attitudinal changes, but significant I believe, because the attitude we bring to the enterprise of living goes a long way toward determining our effectiveness in and appreciation for the act of living. Where I will go, and what I will do, as I travel through these middle years remains undetermined at this point, and that's a decision I've made as well. I'm tightening and provisioning my vessel, and one day in the not distant future, when the wind is right and the sun up bright and my affairs in order, I will cast off. And I may check in with you from time to time. Or, maybe not...

Ravishing the Monk

2010-02-14T06:28:00.000-08:00

The monk toiled diligently in his cell, only occasionally glancing out his tiny window into the outside world. When she appeared in the courtyard, he didn’t notice her at first, so engrossed was he in his work. She brushed at his window, entreating him silently from beyond the glass to come away with her, dancing right up to the pane, then flitting away, dancing merrily about the yard, playing for his attention. Only slowly did he become aware of her, turning hesitantly from his ritual tasks, and began to focus on her. As if in a spell, he beheld her beauty, her effervescent white gossamer veils billowing to and fro, waxing and waning between solid and dream…

He had known her and of her from his youth, admired her from afar and quickened in her proximity from time to time. But never, in his early days, had he felt so deeply drawn to her– her otherness making her too alien to consider as anything more than an occasional curiosity, despite her obvious and inescapable beauty. Finally, as a young man serving in the King’s armies, they had shared an intermittent dalliance in the frigid mountains of a far away land. She had come to him then on clear crisp nights when the air was so chilled it pained one to breathe. She would have her way with him then, leaving him gasping, exhausted and confused, shivering naked in the thin mountain air as she disappeared into the rustling forests, leaving no sign of her passing, and no hint of whether she might some day return. So long ago…

Now she was back, suddenly, unbeckoned. But just as in those days so far past, he felt almost helpless against her spell. He tried, repeatedly, to ignore her enchantments, her silent entreaties beyond the glass. “Come away with me.” He could read her lips, almost smell the sweet crisp tang of her perfumed tresses. He would not. Could not. He had work to do, a new life now with meaning and responsibility and others relying on him. And he knew that no good could come of his falling back into her spell. He had, after more than two score years, managed to banish those sweet but too brief memories from his tortured mind. He had erected walls and gates and bars, dug deep moats, donned new armor and the accoutrements of his calling, found a certain if somewhat confining safety. And here she was, back again, threatening it all…

“Master, I must go,” he pleaded. “If I do not, I will surely go insane right here at my work table.” The Master, of course, didn’t understand. “We have work that must be done, and you are the one who must do it,” he replied sternly. And so the monk made his strongest effort to ignore her and the rest of the world outside his cell, and settle back into the routine that had become his refuge. But it was no use. She continued her silent torment, begging and pleading soundlessly for him to come back into the embrace he’d not shared in so many years. Finally, in desperation, he pleaded one last time. “Master, please release me. Only for the day. If I don’t go I will kill myself and be of no use to you or anyone else. Just a single day and night, and I will be past this madness and back to my old self. Otherwise, I will surely kill myself before the sun goes down.” The Master relented, shaking his head with a sardonic grin as he followed his acolyte’s fevered gaze to the tiny window, through which he saw absolutely nothing but swirling snow…

The monk had scarce stepped through the gate when she grasped his hand and whisked him away in that magical fashion he’d forgotten, with images and colors and castles and towns merely blurs, until suddenly, they were alone. They jostled back and forth only briefly, reacquainting themselves like the old lovers they were, and then she took him into her wholly and completely, gripping him like a vice and coaxing him onward – ever onward. He exerted himself until he was spent, the sweat running down his brow and back, slowly cooling in the chilled air, only to turn to steam again as she demanded more and more. He took her into his mouth, savored her sweet juices trickling down his fevered throat. She smiled in pleasure as he savored every inch of her, gurgled with delight as he coaxed her stream into a raging flood. For hours they went on, giving and taking, sparing nary a moment to rest. And then dusk approached, and she wrapped him fully in her embrace, gave him a firm and final squeeze, and as he gasped in rapture, she was gone…

He came to, as years ago, in darkness, with bright stars dancing tauntingly overhead. He lay on his back, naked in the snow, shriveled and shivering, but at a strange peace he’d not felt since those days long ago. He slowly got up, gathered his garments together, shook the powdered snow from them and eased them onto his body now ice crusted in frozen rivulets of sweat. He beat and rubbed himself and jumped up and down until the blood, which had too nearly ceased to flow, regained its current and sent needles of fire into his fingers and toes. Slowly he gathered his bearings, and began the long trek back to the abbey, where he’d promised to be by morning. And in the bleary corners of his mind, he recalled the day’s events, blending seamlessly with those from so long ago, and felt both exhilaration and exhaustion as his feet crunched through the trackless snow. He knew that sometime before he died, she would be back for him again. And he knew the next time she would kill him. And he longed for her return…

Spirit Spark, Spirit Flame

2010-02-06T05:16:00.000-08:00

"I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance." - William Faulkner-

As usual, I have only the slightest sense of where I will go with this, although I knew that this week I'd be putting closure to my rumination's on my Bert story, trying to draw some meaning from the experience. As I may have mentioned in the past, I am poorly read in a classical sense - was actually an English minor, but one needn't actually read so much or well to achieve that dubious distinction. Anyway, as sleep was falling from my eyes after some really weird and off-topic end of night dreams, I began discussing As I Lay Dying with my wife as a source for today's discourse, not remembering its topic, authorship, etc. - only the title. She, who had in her youth tricked herself into doing a term paper on this brief tome, based solely on the fact that it was "a skinny book," assured me that if I want to close my Bert chapter on a bright tone, As I Lay Dying would not be an assist. Those of you who know, know. Those who haven't read Faulkner, please do find the time. Just start with The Reivers to fall in love with him, then go from there...

Leaving this week's memorial service for Bert, I thought, and perhaps stated aloud, that it was the most moving service for a Caucasian that I ever recall attending. I've been to several black funerals, and there is a spirit there that I've never really sensed in an Anglo or Hispanic event. Somehow, I think that the spirit of life is more comfortable making itself felt in Black churches than White, where I can safely say I've seldom felt much of anything despite some arduous efforts on my part.

I would say that there were at least 150 in attendance, of which I knew only a handful. And it was pointed out that this was true of many there - Bert having so enmeshed himself into so many lives and disparate groups, that the lament and celebration of his passing didn't only bring individuals together, but actual groups that under normal circumstances might never intersect. The most prevalent were the role-players from Scarborough Fair, a local medieval celebration in which Bert had long been an energetic participant. I'd never interacted with this lively crew, except the few that Bert introduced or invited to our brewery rendezvous location. And there were the pubsters, the cyclists, classmates. In his too short life, Bert never met a stranger, and I don't think much tolerated them. If you were going to take up space in his proximity, you were going to be part of the game...

I'm not going to ramble on about my friend Bert, or his memorial, or his untimely passing. I will express what joy it was to be at a memorial where the drinking of beer was prevalent (and more than a little shocking to the funeral home directors), and nary a single formal prayer was muttered; where singing and laughter easily outweighed the wailing and lament, although we of course had that too. It was at this moment in time that Bert's spirit was formally recognized and finally distributed among those of us who shared his life, and I think we were all a little shocked to realize the full extent of the gift he had given us. A crew of us gathered last evening for a final farewell, and now we'll spin off in our various directions, each of us taking a piece of Bert with us, with a few making a real effort to have that piece invigorate our own lives, and the lives of others we touch. But everyone that Bert touched will, intentionally or not, carry him with us and continue to have him influence our lives well beyond his point of departure. And that, my friends, is the moral of today's ditty which I will strive to make more concise than the last few...

Faulkner says in the quote above that Man has a soul, and that this is why he will persevere. Then he says Man has a spirit, and attempts to leave a reader the impression that the two are the same. I contend that they are not, believe that they are not, and expect I shall so believe to my grave. Following is my belief regarding the spirit and the soul, and it is only a belief, unprovable, as are all matters spiritual. My thoughts and feelings surrounding Bert's passing have only served to strengthen this sense. For those of you who choose to believe in the individual soul, resurrection, life everlasting, a communion of saints, cherubim and seraphim and such, please feel free...

As usual, we will begin with a disclaimer regarding my formal education. I've not read much of Plato, Aristotle or any of the Greeks, nor of Thomas Aquinas, de Chardin or other philosophers and theologians who have reached into the realms we will be lightly treading this week. I intend to, before I die, but haven't yet gotten around to it so my thoughts are not much informed by their thoughts or teachings. If a reader should see some parallel or conflict in my thinking and theirs, feel free to share, as this may help guide my future studies...

I believe that each individual is entrusted with his or her little piece of the Spirit of Life while still in the womb - not at the moment of conception, but at the moment of either self or other awareness. When a woman becomes aware of the stirring of life within her, and either thrills at the knowledge or shudders in fear, the spirit exists. Can we trace it to when the strip turns blue? That's getting a bit esoteric for me, but I would suggest not. I think, and this will be a recurring theme, that the new life must be actually felt, sensed, experienced, either by itself or others - not just intellectually recognized...

It has been fairly well established that, while still in utero, the fetus intakes information from the outside world. I would say that this intake might, but doesn't necessarily, constitute the growth of the fetus' spirit and perhaps a step in the transformation to human from living tissue. It is precisely this gray area that allows non-ideologues to rationally discuss the morality and ethics surrounding the abortion debate. I will say that these in utero experiences, when intentional - mothers reading to their unborn, music seeping into the formative experience and such, are most assuredly the mothers and the greater world's portions of spirit reaching inward and attempting to expand, and I can't help but see these at some point making a connection. One of the many great unknowables that permeate existence...

It is estimated that as many as fifty percent of human pregnancies result in miscarriage, many so early they are never recognized. Was a piece of the human spirit extinguished in these cases? I will argue vehemently not, as I don't believe the spirit is ever extinguished, nor ever solely contained within the individual. It is a shared thing, exists as a function and result of sharing in fact, and in many of these cases it may well have been shared with none of the parties being consciously aware of it. If the mother doesn't know she was pregnant, and the fetus doesn't know it exists, and the pregnancy terminates, whence the loss? A topic too complex to ruminate on today, but one worthy, perhaps, of pondering or of further discussion somewhere down the road...

At some point, we become aware, a point that always precedes our recognition that we are aware. When a newly born baby cries out upon its first exposure to light and crushingly loud sound and temperature differentials and new discomforts, its spirit is growing, as is the mother's when she is relieved of the pain of delivery, the weight of her physical burden, and feels the joy of that first welcome cry. When the child learns the comfort of nuzzling at the mother's breast, of being swaddled in a quiet room after exposure to the noisy and raucous outside world, of soothing music or sounds differing from those experienced in the womb, the spirit is growing. And so it continues...

So, does this early spiritual growth and learning differ markedly from that of other sentient beings? I would argue that it really doesn't. The earthworm, the fish, the kitten and calf, they all grow through generally the same process. If anything differentiates the growth of the spirit in humanity from that of other beings, it is living the human life - developing and appreciating the incredible capacity of the human mind, the ability to be self-aware, and the human experience overall. And the more intensely one lives life, experiences the world, enmeshes the self in the world and interacts with the world, both human and non-human, the greater grows the spirit. And then we come to the fun part...

My friend Bert lived a life of unparalleled intensity, a notion that was alluded to over and over during last week's and last night's memorials. I believe that, at least partly because of his ADD, each moment was in many ways more real to him than to those of us not so afflicted. Every conversation was, at the time he was having it,the most important conversation of his life. Every bike ride, scuba dive, pub crawl, role-playing antic, construction project, lover - almost like his first and only. To be around this remarkable man as he lived life more fully than most of us can imagine, was to be touched by an energy that was almost superhuman. And as I looked at photos of him on a collage friends and family had assembled, photos I'd not seen before, I could see that this intensity was not some late in life manifestation, but had a been a hallmark from childhood. I can comfortably say that, more than anyone else I can remember in my life, Bert embodied the maxim, Carpe Diem. Indeed, the day, the hour, the moment - have never been more firmly seized than when in his grasp. In AA we're told, "One day at a time," and "Live in the moment." Bert lived these lessons for me...

During the celebrations of Bert's life this week, I had an opportunity to meet his German father, and a brother I never knew he had. Both seemed to me to want desperately to be angry at Bert, as is the normal reaction when one we love takes his own life. And yet I sensed they could not, because it was so evident that the spirit of the enormous crowds of friends and lovers who coalesced to comfort family and each other, and to celebrate a life so fully lived, were the direct result of Bert's life and spirit. Most of us touch people and share our spirit through a lifetime of fourscore years and more. Bert's spirit flame burned so bright and intensely, that it consumed itself in barely half that time. Yet I would argue that, to the extent that intent and effect are factored into the analysis, his spirit is far greater for having touched so many in such a concentrated period of time. Because Bert's flame was hotter and brighter, and such a large portion of his circle of influence was younger and more vibrantly active than the average, it will spread farther faster and have more effect than that of the average liver of life. And how can any of us hold that against him?

My take away, then, is that, just as Socrates stated regarding an unexamined life, so too does the reverse apply: "An unlived life is not worth examining." Yup, just coined that one myself. Hah! I like it!

And of course, to circle back around, I have utmost confidence that I will never see Bert again, in any dimension or realm. His fragment of the spirit of life, first sparked into being in his mothers womb, was tended and stoked and fanned into a mighty flame that in the end consumed him too early, but not before it had touched me and warmed me more deeply than many of us have been or will be again, and been passed along to me, and to countless others, to spread and grow in small ways and large over many generations. Many of the great spirits of humanity are preserved and recognized through recorded feats, works of art and architecture and literature and music, execution of wars, development of religions and languages and philosophies and technologies. But here, a 45 year-old bi-polar ADD suffering dynamo of a man, publicly unremarked, made a much greater than average contribution to the human experience, one for which I am truly grateful, and one which I can only hope to match through my own living of this wonderful gift of life.

Amen.

A Shitty Friend

2010-01-30T13:44:00.000-08:00

Wow! So, life throws us a curve ball once in a while. Mine caught the outside corner of the plate the other evening as I was sitting in my Friday night AA meeting. A friend sent me a brief text message informing me that a mutual buddy had apparently committed suicide a couple of days ago. So of course, moments later was the first time in a month I've been called on to share. What do you say at a moment like that? I don't really remember what I said - shared my loss and shock and befuddlement and settled back in a daze to contemplate the ceiling tiles as the meeting wound its course. Accepted a few kind words from friends and virtual strangers (nobody in the program is truly a stranger - those who know, know.)

It was a couple of hours later, after I'd had dinner, shared the news with my family (they'd met him with me at our local watering hole and he'd helped us move almost a year ago), and settled in front of the computer to visit and get a sense of what had happened, that it began to sink in. I went to his Facebook page, read some comments, shared a few, looked at the pics of his smiling mischievous face - drinking a beer (which we did a fair amount of together), hanging with friends, scuba diving, biking. I really lost it. What a waste and what a loss - one of the most intense livers (not the organ) of life I've ever known. He was what everyone dreams of in a friend - open, curious, vivacious and full of life, funny in the extreme, always ready with a tale to top whatever tales were being shared, bright, and exceptionally caring. As I mentioned elsewhere, I don't think he knew how to say no to anyone in want or need. He will be sorely missed, and I don't begrudge him for a nanosecond the decision he made on how he chose to go. To each his own. He was not the shitty friend. I was...

I am still very early in my sobriety, but am well enough dried out through AA and through counseling to finally confront the demons that drove me to drink in the first place. I've long known that I have few real friends, close friends. You know, the ones with whom you'll share your deepest secrets and fears and desires. I'm probably not very unique in that respect, relative to other men anyway. We tend to share on a pretty superficial level. Women, I think, are much better at that, and probably healthier for it.

AA helps some of us stop our drinking, but its up to those of us who choose to, to to do the deeper work of understanding and dealing with what's driving us to drink. Much of the discoveries can be painful, but richly rewarding as well. At the premature death of my friend, I find myself exploring again the pathologies of relationships and friendships, trying to divine the wheres and hows and whys of our connections with others. In my case, my shrink has helped me conclude that I was emotionally abandoned at multiple times from early childhood through early adulthood, to the point that my defense was to close myself off from all but the most superficial of relationships. I was emotionally abandoned by a mother who had four children in five years, followed five years later by another, apparently leaving her with insufficient time or inclination to give any of us what we needed in terms of emotional nurturing. My best friend moved away when I was twelve, which devastated me more than I realized or shared at the time, although I remember sitting alone and sobbing for hours on end that summer. I never spoke of it to another soul. A few years later, my young girlfriend, who I had no reason to expect to wait for me while I froze my ass off in Korea, wisely chose not to, and that was when I moved from the ranks of high-level amateur drunk to a polished world-class professional. Fresh pliant clay is easily formed, but, once hardened, infuriatingly difficult to reshape...

From that point forward, with lady friends or guy friends, my modus operandi was, I think, eerily similar. I wasn't reluctant to put myself out there enough to get attention, hopefully affection, and affirmation. Once that objective had been accomplished, I shut off the valve. I had what I was after and wasn't going to risk the tiniest amount more. I wasn't about to invest enough that I couldn't handle the loss, and as a result, invested so little I never could enjoy the full potential benefit of any relationship. Low risk, low reward. No gain, but no pain. Pretty pitiful. And pretty shitty if you are on the other side of the equation. None of this was conscious, mind you, nor intentional. Doesn't change what it is, though...

The sad, funny, ironic thing is that many people consider me a good friend, think more highly of me than I likely deserve. While it is true that I will almost always respond to a request from help from someone who asks and genuinely needs it, I don't have a pro-active bone in my body when it comes to seeking out opportunities to serve anything less than humanity as a whole. I've long characterized myself as a "forest person" rather than a "tree person." You know, macro versus micro, when it comes to other human beings. It's only recently that I've started to realize that this is a defensive behavior, designed subconsciously to avoid the personal investment in another individual's life that can, and generally will, lead to pain somewhere along the way. Alcoholics are driven by two things - resentment and fear. I resent, I now realize, my real and imagined losses and abandonments, and I fear repeating them. It's an ugly pathology that has led to a lot of heartache for those who've risked loving me. And it is a perfect factory for manufacturing shitty friends. I'm living proof...

I still cry easily, always have, and have always somehow recognized it as a healthy behavior. But the tears come much more infrequently these days, as I've donned this psychic armor against loss. Care not, hurt not. I'm a smart one to be sure...

Bert, God bless him, had apparently penetrated my protection without my really knowing. He was child-like in many ways, bi-polar and ADD I found out later and recently, which explained the quirkiness that attracted me to him the first time we met at our local brewery. He was getting treatment and some medication, but this is tricky stuff I know from family experiences. I am suspecting that this regiment likely played a role in his final act - will likely never know...

Like me, he never met a stranger. Unlike me, however, he was all in from the first encounter. He was curious and energetic - would be hurt by those who wouldn't hear him out, which were many, as his condition didn't allow for him the patience to hear someone fully out before diving in with his own take on whatever topic was in play. This was never off-putting to me, as I am a serial interrupter as well...

I know some women who played a large role in his life, and am looking forward to visiting with them at his memorial. I'm a big funeral goer, which fascinates those who know me. I always knew that these events weren't for the departed, but for those of us left behind, and had learned as well that I somehow have the capacity to provide some comfort to the bereaved in most cases. For me, I suppose it is a chance to make a little contribution to the loved ones of friends, without any risky commitment. The moral being, even if I'm a shitty friend while you're alive, I'm a real pal when you're dead. So if you're morbidly inclined...

Bert loved women, and they loved him. He was attractive, fit, energetic. If he saw a pretty girl he was likely to make a play, even if she was on the arm of a gorilla. Impulse control issues, you know? He was unable to sustain relationships, though. His mind was off on tangents too quickly for him to make and follow through on longer-term commitments required for successful healthy relationships. And I know now that those who spent sustained periods with him knew of his dark down periods, while I only knew him in his elevated states, during which he craved action and interaction. He was a dedicated cyclist and athlete, rode long distances on his bike, which I'm sure was uplifting to him, with the wind in his ears and the world flashing by and no need to focus on anything but the pumping of his well-muscled legs, deep steady breathing and the stories dancing through his mind. He'd torn an ACL in a skiing accident last spring, and had set back his own recovery a bit by pushing too hard too fast. I know this tormented him. He was also a diver, and I'm sure drew similar comfort in working underwater, alone in the nurturing embrace of the tropical seas he so loved. But a ruptured ear drum had brought an end to this enriching vocation. Life deals us all some hard punches. Bert may have been tagged one too many times...

Ruminating over our too-short friendship and too-few encounters, I find myself wondering if I might suffer from similar psychological or neurological short circuits - will be visiting with my shrink about this and getting her views. (No dark thoughts, friends - don't worry. I'm not wired that way, for sure...) Whatever the case, he reached out to me in his own way a few times toward the end, as he did to others in the final months and weeks and days. Not in a way that foreshadowed what was coming, I don't think, particularly if you're tone deaf to the suffering of other individuals, as I apparently am. Shitty...

We'd only actually visited a few times in the months since I achieved sobriety, as our normal meeting spot was the brewery that my sponsor wisely counseled me to avoid due to its potentially destructive temptations. I know he didn't like to think of me as an alcoholic, as that was me voluntarily stepping down from the mini-pedestal he'd constructed for me in his feverish mind. I think he was coming around to understanding that I wasn't that much changed, just healthier, and that what changes there were I gratefully embraced. He seemed to want me to declare him an alcoholic, which he certainly wasn't, so that he could share my experience. I feel no guilt in not taking on this responsibility. Not my role. I understand now, though, that he was hurting deeply inside, and was in his own way seeking any explanation and solution that would bring him some peace. I didn't realize this, however, until it was too late...

Our last exchange was a series of texts, that I deeply wish now I'd saved:

Bert: "I miss our visits."
Me: "Me too. Hopefully we can go riding when it warms up."
Bert:

Damn it, here come the tears again...

Revolution anyone?

2010-01-24T05:28:00.000-08:00

In a week which saw Scott Brown win a historic Senate victory in Massachusetts and the Supreme Court open the floodgates of corporate campaign contributions against a defenseless public, it wasn't likely that I would be writing about anything other than political matters today. As the week has worn on I've had the chance to listen and learn, study, ruminate and cogitate, and have come to the conclusion that indeed, now may be the time for one of the revolutions that Thomas Jefferson prophesied when he famously stated that, "The tree of liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of patriots..."

First, rest assured that I am no patriot 1, nor do I consider patriotism an admirable or attractive trait. While I do love much about America, I equally love much of other continents and countries, some of which I've not yet physically experienced. To the degree that a country is a parcel or parcels of real estate defined by well articulated borders, it seems a foolish thing to love. Are the mountains of America more lovable than the mountains of Europe or South America or Tibet or Africa? Surely not. Our beaches or prairies or rivers or valleys are somehow more lovely than those of other countries or continents or peoples? Don't be foolish. So if the physical country is not worthy of loving above others, what is it that we should love? Our people? There is something admirable about the historic can-do attitude of Americans, although it seems much on the wane in recent decades. And like all things human, all things in existence really, our self confidence has another side, a darker side - sometimes a destructive arrogance, a disdain for the consequences of our actions, a parochialism born frankly in patriotism, or more accurately nationalism2, which is what drives people to gather in mobs and shout "USA, USA." What is celebrated and promoted in this country, and in most countries, actually is nationalism, which is a very ugly thing and, along with religion, the source of all wars of the modern era.

So, if its not the physical America or the American populace viewed through a clear lens that might inspire a love that would pass the test of patriotism, what might there be? I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but for me it has always been America's future potential, a few proud snippets of our history, and most critically, our form of government as ensconced in the Constitution. I have long held that America's greatest days lay yet ahead, but the events of the past week have caused me to take a closer look and engage in a bit deeper thought on the matter, and as I sit here on a lovely Sunday morning in a America, I am no longer certain. And I am frightened for my children for the first time in my adult life...

Certainly the angst in the American people precedes the startling developments in Massachusetts and in the Supreme Court, the current fiscal crisis, or Obama's change-focused election. Historians can argue it out, but I have long held that America changed in a fundamental way during the Viet Nam era. Our government waged a war for several years that the citizens of this country and the world opposed, all in an era of excessive politicization of governmental powers under the paranoid Richard Nixon. The abuses of Hoover's FBI came to light on the heels of the national scandal of state troopers waging war against unarmed civilians during the then recent and not settled civil rights movement. Following the shootings at Kent State, an unprecedented schism formed between the generations that has only partially healed over as my parent's generation began receiving its just recognition as "the greatest generation" for having come together, struggled through the depression and fought the last just war in our nation's history. America emerged dazed, uncertain about government or our role, struggled against new global economic competition, suffered through Jimmy Carter's so-called "malaise," and witnessed the end of the "cold war" and the rise of the new battle against radical Islam, all without ever having our sense of confidence in government restored. Politics became more polarized and coarser, driving away independents and moderates, at the same time that unprecedented levels of money poured into the electoral process following the Supreme Court's disastrous Buckley v. Valeo3 of 1976, which drew a bizarre distinction between political contributions and expenditures, and created the cancerous correlation between campaign expenditures and free speech.

In the intervening period, attempts have been made by various factions to both increase and decrease the flow of moneys from various sources into various segments of the political process in an ongoing battle between disparate and antagonistic interest groups, with the net result being that the 2008 election cycle saw an unprecedented $5 billion spent on federal campaigns from Congress through the Presidency. While this is a topic too intensive and convoluted for treatment here, suffice to say that the American electorate believes with complete justification that the process is corrupt, tainted possibly beyond repair, and as such government at all levels is held in universal disdain. The Brown victory was a breath of fresh air in demonstrating that an underdog challenger can in fact wage and win a successful campaign against the odds, but only in an open seat race. The effect of the this week's Supreme Court decision is to dampen whatever hope the Brown victory might have birthed among independents and thinking Americans across the political spectrum.

Seeds of Revolt
In November of 2008 President Barack Obama won an historic election, which was itself a revolution against the eight dark years of the Bush era, with its attendant executive branch over-reach, encroachments on civil liberties, electoral and other political chicanery, and unapologetic politicization of all branches of government. Following the 9/11 Al Queda attack on the WTC and Washington, Bush was handed perhaps the opportunity of a generation to follow up on his campaign promise of being "A uniter and not a divider," and to unify the American people in a way not really possible since the darkest days of the Viet Nam era. Instead, he chose to prosecute an illegal and unpopular war in Iraq, divide the people with his unprecedented violations of privacy, his illegal support of criminal acts, total negligence of government's regulatory responsibilities, and unprecedented spending. And he topped it off with the appointment of John Roberts and Samuel Alieto, two right-wing demagogues, to the Supreme Court. The stage was set...

The Obama effort was historic in terms of money raised and spent, the level of participation at the grass roots level by both volunteers and contributors, and of course in the clear cut and inarguable victory of America's first African American President. Obama raised and spent unprecedented amounts of money, and with an unprecedented number of contributions from individuals and small donors. Most watchers and pundits saw this as a watershed moment in America's political history, and indeed it was. Obama, like Bush, campaigned on a change platform, promising to change the tone in Washington and its way of doing business. Unfortunately, and a little counter-intuitively, he has been most hampered in this noble direction by having proven to have significant coat-tails, achieving office with a robust majority in the House, and what became a super-majority in the Senate with the final seating of Minnesota Senator Al Franken. Just as this seemingly powerful position elevated the hopes of many liberal Democrats, the Republicans showed their trademark discipline in coming together in lock-step to oppose the liberal agenda being pushed by both houses, with Obama proving unequal to the task of restraining their enthusiasm. As a result, and amazingly despite the overwhelming Democratic majorities, Obama and the democrats have proven incredibly inept at accomplishing anything of substance that would allay the very real fears and anxieties of the American people.

To add fuel to the fire, within months of Obama's victory, the 912 Project was launched, ostensibly as a counter-revolutionary effort promoted and led by Glenn Beck, one of the most despicable figures in American political media today. This group brilliantly emulated many tactics from the Obama playbook, reaching out through the internet to attract both supporters and donors, and to organize in an increasingly intensive fashion. While it remains to be seen what the long term effects of the "tea party" movement will be, it seems clear that just as Obama brought unprecedented numbers of new participants into the process, the "teabaggers" have already proven an unsettling force on the Republican side of the aisle. Comprised overwhelmingly of disaffected middle-age and older white voters of a libertarian mind-set, this movement nonetheless has provided a venue for anti-government and anti-incumbent reactionaries that threatens incumbent Republicans at local, state and national levels. Right here in Texas, a former Republican state chair alighned with the tea party movement is surging in the Republican gubernatorial primary, and incumbent Republican representatives find themselves facing for the first time in their careers viable energetic challengers from the tea party faction. The old adage, "May you live in interesting times," has found a home on the contemporary political landscape. So...

Revolutionary Opportunities...
Many on the left felt or hoped that Obama's election was both the revolution and the victory, despite the fact that he stressed over and over that it was but a beginning. I believe recent developments prove the accuracy of his characterization, and that none of us has the foggiest notion of what the end result might look like. While I am indeed preparing for the worst, and am in no way confident that Jefferson's bloody revolution can be avoided, I believe there is an avenue worthy of consideration. The simple fact is that Obama remains immensely popular, and only a small but vocal minority oppose him personally, almost totally on racial grounds, although only the tiniest subset will concede that fact. But when you look at the disaffection with the federal government, Washington, Congress, et al., the numbers are vastly higher, and very real. Most, without a reasoned intellectual understanding of the causes, believe that the government and virtually all that stems from it are corrupt, and I tend to count myself among these.

There is a quasi-legal construct unofficially titled "The Fruit of the Poison Tree,"4 which holds specifically that the product of illegal searches is inadmissible as evidence. The same principle, felt but not generally articulated, applies to politics and government, and is what I believe underlies most public disenchantment with politics, politicians, and government. My belief is that it all traces back to money, and power, and the power that money brings, and the money that power attracts, which is why this week's SCOTUS decision has possibly opened a door widely to a new revolutionary approach. Ralph Waldo Emerson in an early 1800's paean to our revolutionary ancestors, called the Concord skirmish "the shot heard 'round the world." I think in our current revolution, that shot was fired last week at the American people by the Supreme Court of the United States in its ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. The question now, is, will we run or will we fight, and if we fight, what is our strategy and what are our tactics?

And so I have spent the last several days reading and studying and scratching my head and visiting with friends and associates and strangers, all with one objective in mind, which was to answer a question to which I already knew the answer. Namely, is there any way to undo the damage the Court has done us short of a Constitutional Amendment? Of course, the answer is no. How then, do we Amend to undo the damage, and if we're going to amend, do we want to isolate it to this particular transgression? I say no. This action was perhaps the proverbial straw, but it is the culmination of political and governmental violations extending back more than a quarter century. I say, if we're going to fight, let's fight to win, and get the whole mess as cleaned up as we can once and for all. And all my friends are aghast!

I cannot begin to tell you how many have leaped into the fray yelling and screaming that there could be nothing worse than a Constitutional Convention, that there's no way to limit the topics and issues covered, and that this action could lead to the total destruction of our Nation. To which I reply, respectfully, "Balderdash!" It will do no such thing, and if it did, perhaps its time for us to declare the experiment a failure and get on to whatever comes next. On the other hand, I am absolutely confident that if we accept the Court's ruling, and all the other erosions of our government and politics that have befallen us in the last several decades- if we do nothing to, as President Obama is so fond of saying, "bend the arc of history," then we are well and truly lost.

Now before everyone flutters off in a panic, how about we read exactly what Article V of our beloved Constitution actually says, eh?

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

There are two means by which Constitutional Amendments might come about. The first, a top-down process originating in the Congress, which, since Congress is about 90 percent of the problem, we shouldn't be expecting any time soon. The second is a bottom-up approach which has never been utilized, although it has been threatened and has come close to being enacted on several occasions. Name me one revolution worth discussing that has been anything other than bottom-up. Just one? No? Uh-huh. I thought not. The Founders put this provision in place specifically so We the People would have an avenue to wrest control from those who believe they control the government, should the need arise. I believe the need has arisen, and that now might well be the time. And anyway, what in the world is everyone so afraid of? Calm down and read the damn thing, please?

First, the Convention shall only be called upon the application of two thirds of the state legislatures. If we, the citizens of the United States, convince two-thirds of the legislatures we want some amendments that aren't forthcoming from Congress, you'd prefer...what? And you'd consider yourselves to be living in a democratic republic...why? What color of collar would you like, and how heavy a chain? Not for me, thank you very much...

Ok, so now the Congress is in convention for the purpose of considering an Amendment or Amendments upon the request of the citizens. Granted, its a little messy that there are no rules defining the exact mode of operating the Convention - I would recommend that be one of the first Amendments to be considered, although said consideration would have no effect on the disposition, passage or ratification of the others. This time...

The point is, the Article clearly defines what the process will be before any action of the Convenened Congress becomes part of the supreme law of the land - exactly the same course as followed in adopting the last twenty-seven Amendments: send back to the states, with ratification by three fourths of the legislatures within a prescribed (generally seven-year) period of time required to pass. So, despite all the alarmism, the predictions of one of my more excitable friends will not be the end result of such an effort. Rupert Murdoch will not be on the Supreme Court. KBR will not run EVERYTHING, and Glenn Beck will not be Secretary of Education, at least not as a result of a Constitutional Convention.

So, for the sake of argument, let's pretend that a decent segment of the American people latch on to this notion. How do we act on it? This is the sweet part. This is a very doable fully grass roots opportunity, and folks who know me know I'm all about the grass roots. First, remembering that this is the Supreme law of the land we're dealing with here, we agree on a small but effective group of Amendments we feel would rectify the major structural problems we face. (I will list my preliminaries below.) In a coordinated fashion on a 50 state basis we let our aspiring and incumbent legislators know what we're expecting from them, and identify them to our members as supporters of the people or opponents of the people, and let the voters have that information toinform their votes. Hopefully we elect enough of our supporters in enough of our legislatures that the process takes off and runs.

Now, here comes the fun part! We're telling our state legislators, the bulk of whom hope to one day advance to federal office themselves, to implement a process that will weaken the ability of incumbents currently clogging up the works to stand in the way of this avaricious ambition. Sweet, huh? Yes, they will be making it tougher on themselves down the road should they succeed, but that's a bridge I'm willing to bet they're willing to worry about when and if they get to it.

And here's even better news! I manged to make contact this weekend with leaders of a national coalition that is already in motion to accomplish something very much along the lines of what we're discussing here. And they're already in motion. And you'll be hearing about it publicly within a matter of weeks. And you'll have ample opportunity to get involved right up to your necks. And we're talking about this year and interfacing with candidates who are currently jockeying for your support for the November 2010 general elections. How cool is that? Right? Right...

So, as another friend asked, what Amendments would you propose, Mark? Well, as we all know I've again exceeded budget (and likely your attention span) and this is already a lot to digest, I'm going to give a very quick rundown of where I see the problems and the very general solutions I think would help, without getting into all sorts of fancy schmancy legalese - there will be lawyers aplenty to guide us when and if this actually gets off the ground. Please keep in mind that I am a single small voice, and one which isn't overly enthralled with the federal model, which was at its inception a compromise between the federalists and anti-federalists. I see an absolute need for the states, for certain sovereignty, and for the efficiency of certain governmental functions being controlled at the state and lower levels. I don't see this need as extending to the gumming up of the whole governmental machine...

Article I, Sec. 2. Is too lengthy to get to in depth - suffice to say that Representatives shall be limited to a maximum of four two-year terms, and that redistricting shall be handled at the federal level by an fully-automated computerized process which pays no heed to incumbency, and which has as its focus compactness, recognition of municipal, topographical and other objective criteria, except that such modification cannot have the effect of diluting current minority representation.

Article I, Sec. 3 Again, too much to get into, but I would propose limiting Senators to three six-year terms, and am not opposed to a discussion of returning Senatorial appointment to the State legislatures. I am not passionate either way, but as I know I'm in the minority in my general disdain for states' rights and federalism, this would be in my view an acceptable swap for our removing from the states the powers of legislative redistricting, partisan gerrymandering, inequitable and preferential ballot acess provisions, etc.

Article I, Sec. 4. Modified to read: The Congress shall by Law make or alter Regulations governing the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, which Regulations shall be uniform throughout the several States, and which shall have neither the intent nor effect of giving advantage to incumbents over non-incumbent challengers, nor to candidates of one political Party over another, nor of a Political party over a candidate not aligned with a political Party, nor of Candidates of a major or established Party over a minor or new Party...(You get the drift.) And I suppose it will be here that the fully publicly financed campaign provision would be inserted.

Article I, Sec. 5. Another lengthy one, but it is here that we would put certain restraints on both Houses to make their own rules (This is the Founders single biggest failure in my view, but those were different times...), in particular eliminating for all time the rules surrounding the filibuster, the most undemocratic tradition in all of the Federal government. Ditto the crap about a single Senator being able to put a hold on executive appointments. We need to be reasonable, but not overly...

Article V. Modified to read: The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States for specific Amendments, shall call a Convention for proposing only such Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. (James Madison was opposed to the convention process precisely for the reason that so many are afraid of it now, but I believe this can be overcome by careful wording in this particular Amendment. There must be wording that limits the Amendment process to Constitutional matters and doesn't attempt to utilize it for legislative purposes, lest we become as screwed up as California or Texas in this respect...)

And of course we will need to try and give SCOTUS some direction regarding its authority in determining Consitutional matter, particularly as affects the Court, a source of contention going all the way back to Marbury v. Madison.

As you can see, this is a project in the early stages, but one which is infinitely doable, and which I will argue vehemently must be done. I am extremely flexible on the specifics of what we strive for, but strive we must. In any case, I will build my armory in anticipation of the worst possible outcome, which will be occasioned by our doing nothing. It is my most sincere hope, however, that we will be able to avoid the armed struggle that my father predicted when I was still wet behind the ears, and that my children will in fact have the opportunity to grow old and raise their families in the great and peaceful nation of which so many of us have for so long dreamed.

It is late and I am exhausted. Please forgive the typos - will attempt to rectify in coming days. Good night, friends, until next we visit...

(1) Merriam-Webster online: "one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests."
(2) Id: loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially : a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational group
(3) http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0424_0001_ZS.html
(4) http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fruit+of+the+poison+tree
(5) http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/art5_user.html#art5_hd10 (See "The Convention alternative - questions)

Is AA a Religion?

2010-01-16T16:40:00.000-08:00

I will begin by advising both regulars and newcomers that this is only one of myriad topics that we'll be discussing here, so don't want anyone put off by this week's heavier subject matter after last week's lighthearted look at sex in the kitchen. Also, as I have many friends who are, like me, "Friends of Bill," and know that most others have been touched in some way by addiction either personally or in their families, please know that I intend no offense in anything which follows. As always, these are my thoughts and mine alone, worth exactly what you're paying for them unless you choose to assign some other value - your prerogative...

I will begin by reminding all that I am a recovering alcoholic, having just passed the seven month mark in what I intend to be a lifelong commitment to sobriety. It was with the greatest reluctance that I admitted last summer that my drinking was more in control of me than I of it, a situation I chose to reverse of my own accord, and not as the result of some precipitating incident, court order, spousal ultimatum, calamity or other outside pressure. I actually strongly considered at the time trying to go it alone, and am not convinced that I couldn't have made it. However, like most "problem drinkers" (almost always a cute term that alcoholics or their enablers utilize prior to the light coming on), I had tried half-halfheartedly to quit a few times and failed. Fortunately, my best friend Shawn, who had been a big drinking buddy and who had been in the program for more than a decade at the time, had through AA, therapy and intensive introspection, turned his life around. Fortunately I had enough sense to know that I was going to need some help. Like me, he was raised Catholic, in a household where drinking was a constant, and is a floater between agnosticism and atheism. He assured me that I was bright enough to work my way past the "God stuff" and told me that he would stand by my side, but only if I would give the program a try. I'm eternally grateful that he did.

It is interesting to note that, according to dictionary definitions, one would be hard-pressed not to deem Alcoholics Anonymous a religion. One of the definitions in Merriam Webster's online dictionary is "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith." I can assure you that nobody who is an active participant in AA, NA or any other 12-step program will deny that this is, in fact, a perfect definition of the program. Other definitions and other dictionaries use the word "religious" pretty liberally, with little distinction made between "religious" and "spiritual." For most of us, there is a decided distinction between the two which I will get to shortly...

As a quick aside, I was similarly put off some years back - a decade I guess now that I think of it, when I was running for Congress. I was very big on campaign finance reform - was in fact my cornerstone issue (I didn't win so there may be a lesson there...) Anyway, I was trying to draw the distinctions between politics (bad) and government (potentially good.) Go ahead and look it up, I'll wait. Uh-huh. In almost every dictionary the definition of politics is "the art of government." What the hell is that all about? I just really, really hate "a horse is a horse" definitions. Sorry, I digress...

AA's GSO (General Service Organization) is tax exempt and does instruct affiliates on how to achieve tax exempt status, but pointedly relies not on the church exemption (which I think is a crock of shit) but on the general non-profit service organization exemption. Kudos for that important distinction. However, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in a 2007 ruling, said "...the constitutional dividing line between church and state (sic) is so clear that a parole officer can be sued for damages for ordering a parolee to go through rehabilitation at Alcoholics Anonymous or an affiliated program for drug addicts." And rulings from across the nation since 1996 have established that "requiring a parolee to attend religion-based treatment programs violates the First Amendment," the court said. I suppose it is understandable that, just as much of the general public cannot explain the difference between spiritual and religious, the government is apparently unable to formulate a distinction either. (Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/08/BA99S1AKQ.DTL#ixzz0cpLBaWBX) (Another topic for another day...)

Ok, enough of the formalities. You all know, or should know by now, that I don't do religion. Everyone is welcome to his or her own, and I make no judgments. I was raised in a religious household, attended parochial school and mass every day except Saturday from before I can remember to when I was 14 or so; baptized, confirmed, altar boy, the whole nine yards. Hell, I'm told all the mothers had me slated for the seminary. I guess they willfully ignored my undisguised affinity for the fairer sex. Religion can do that to you - myopia I mean. I managed to pretty well jettison the practice without losing the concept and basic beliefs, and even got baptized a second time as a Mormon, hoping to get into a certain lovely lassie's temple garments. That didn't take either, as she had some silly notion about marriage before the fun stuff and I wasn't going for any of that. Over the course of time my belief in the Christian version of God was replaced with one larger and more universal...

Point being, I'm no stranger to religion, rituals, practices, scriptures, etc. Again, there is little on the surface that distinguishes AA from traditional religions. Question is, is there anything at all? I believe there is, something rather large, and will attempt to explain...

First, AA is very straightforward in virtually all its written materials (texts) regarding "A Higher Power" and "the God of your(sic) understanding." Granted, Bill and the other founders in the 1930s were typical and traditional Christians for the most part, and admittedly introduced this flexibility only after some serious consideration. And the fact that every meeting I've been to opens with the Serenity Prayer - "God grant me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change..." and closes with the Lord's Prayer - "Our Father, who art in Heaven..." seems to mitigate in favor of the traditional western monotheistic Christian God model. The second tradition (there are twelve) states in part: "...there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself ..." Again, we have a monotheistic deity apparently male in gender - old white haired fart floating in the clouds, right? But more critically, the third tradition states: "The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking."

Do we detect a dichotomy here? Well, duh! Of course we do, and that's the point. While the second tradition may be offensive to atheists, agnostics, Wiccans, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., it is not exclusive - as He (yeah, I hate that too) may express himself to one as "She," as "Mother Earth," as "The Infinite Universe," or as the high holy tadpole circling the sun. The fact that a bunch of Christians used Christian language to describe the God of their understanding isn't nearly as surprising as the fact that they very generously left a hole for the rest of us wide enough to drive a universe through. And the third tradition is exquisite in its simplicity. Anyone and everyone who desires to stop drinking is invited, and by simply showing up becomes a member. I really know of no religion whose doors are that wide open, which makes so little demand on its members. You need not believe in its heaven or its hell, its sins or its salvations, honor its patriarchs or saints or cherubim or seraphim or idols or icons or texts or anything else. You don't have to read or memorize or recite or vow, to wear special garments or honor certain days, tithe or fast or self-flagellate or kneel or make signs in the air or on your body. Most critically, you are not compelled to believe anything - only desire. And that which you desire is supported by real tangible evidence in the form of fellow members who had the same desire, followed the same steps you'll be following, and have actually and demonstrably achieved exactly what you hope to achieve. Is there any traditional or non-traditional religion that you know of that requires absolutely nothing of its members, except a desire to stop doing something that is destroying our lives? If, so, please let me know...

If you Google the title of this post, you'll find several entries, almost all anti-AA and making the argument that AA is in fact a religion requiring fealty to their credos and rituals and some even accusing AA of being a cult. I will not cast aspersions on the authors, as I don't know them and haven't walked in their shoes. I will say that the one time that I tried AA before - perhaps 15 years or so ago - can't remember now, I went to one or two meetings, under spousal duress if memory serves, and walked away absolutely put off by "all the God stuff." It was God this and God that and higher power this, and surrender and pray and, aaaargh! I couldn't take it! Turns out that the problem wasn't AA - it was me. I wasn't ready yet. I hadn't hit my bottom. I hadn't admitted that I had a problem I couldn't handle by myself and that I needed help. And that's all AA is, is help. It is a tool in the tool belt - really a set of tools. Go out on a construction site sometime and see how much is being accomplished by the workers who have a belt full of tools but nothing in their hands...

My guess is that the authors of these articles are for the most part real alcoholics or addicts, came into the program looking for someone else to fix their problems, and walked away disappointed and angry. (All untreated non-recovering alcoholics and addicts, by the way, are angry. Most generalizations are dangerous, but not this one. Anger and self-loathing are two universal symptoms...) People become similarly disenchanted with actual religions, which they turn to hoping for some improvement in their lives and when it doesn't come to pass blame the church or the religion or the God or the minister or almost anyone but themselves. Of course the smart religions don't promise anything in the here and now, but only in the hereafter. Kind of tough to disprove in this life, eh? Which is another very important distinction between AA and actual religions. AA's promise is temporal, worldly, tangible. What AA promises is that if you dedicate yourself each day to not drinking, and if you follow the steps that others have followed to accomplish this task which is very difficult for most of us, that the alcohol (or drugs or eating or gambling or sex or any other addiction that has a twelve-step program) will no longer control your life. It doesn't say you'll have eternal salvation, be rich and famous, have perfect body, a shiny car, a great sex life, a happy marriage. It doesn't say that your life will be perfect or that the underlying psychological and spiritual causes of your addictive and destructive behavior will be cured. All it says is that the destructive behavior will no longer control your life. And it works...

I know we're way over budget here, so let me close with these few observations. While AA and other twelve step programs are not, in my view, religions, they are deeply and profoundly spiritual. They do require that the participant admit his or her weakness and insignificance in the face of a greater power. For me, that greater power is the eternal infinite universe, against the power and magnificence of which I am less significant than a single molecule of salt in all the oceans of the earth. For you, it may be something totally different. If, however, you believe that there is no power higher than yourself, don't waste your time, because for you, the programs won't work. For you more so, but for every addict, the problem isn't the alcohol or the drugs or the sex or the eating or the gambling or the stealing or whatever destructive behavior is your particular demon or combination of demons. The problem is you, the individual. And for those too myopic or stubborn to see their own weakness and too prideful to admit they need help, no religion or program or anything else will ease their suffering. I know. I were one once...

Sex & Cooking

2010-01-08T18:01:00.001-08:00

How do I let you people talk me into these things? What? I didn't? A cheap ploy to attract readers? I never...

Okay, yes I did. And so I will. The simple fact is that I do both. Enjoy both. Occasionally excel in both. Sex & cooking we're talking about here, remember? Most often, I'm sure, I'm just barely above average at both. See, I'm just like you and told you that from the get go. Didn't I? Well???

I'm really letting this blog thing drive itself a bit, being all Tao and Zen and into therapy and recovery and whatnot. It is seldom that I know when I start where its going to wind up, but on this one I actually had a few thoughts prior to pitching the notion, so this could prove interesting. Also, while its not exactly intentional, I'm pretty sure you're going to at some point pick up a recurring Mars/Venus theme over the course of my ramblings. No, I am not a misogynist and am getting tired of hearing that. If a woman is a bitch she's a bitch, just like a guy who's a bastard's a bastard. Get over it. (By the way, who else knew that the term "son of a bitch" was just about the worst possible thing a Native American could call someone? They had no worse words for another human being. That's what I heard somewhere, anyway...)

Point being, I love women, don't hate or revile or mistrust women any more than I do men. Recognizing that generalizations are always dangerous and inaccurate, I am willing to say that I generally have very little use for men, the majority of whom (here in Texas and the U.S. anyway) are generally shallow, narrow minded, dually focused (sports and sex), and of no appreciable value to society that I can see. Does this make me, in fact a misandrist? Hmmm...

I've only recently come to question why I have for so long held women in higher esteem. I really hope its not just about sex. Very disturbing, that. Anyway, the fact that I consider and called the "ladies" who bedded down with married Tiger "hos" doesn't mean I hate women. I just think they're hos, that's all. Pretty skanky for the most part, too. Hustler fare, if you know what I mean. What the hell was he thinking? Not about cooking, that's for sure...

Okay, fine. Here goes...

First, it is my observation that men and women approach both cooking and sex very differently. Some of this is societal - women are "expected" to cook, ergo its a chore and who wants to do chores? I know very few women who claim to love to cook. I know a number of men who love to cook, myself among them. Why? Partly I'm sure because we don't have to - its voluntary, unexpected, not demanded. I mean, I may be a little strange in this but I've actually shoveled dirt for a living, dug ditches and such, so, as a result, I really don't enjoy doing it now, even in my own yard. The wife digs (little holes for little plants) and I cook. So, lets accept that men who love to cook, as likely as not, don't have to, and that women who would prefer not to cook take this position largely because they're expected to. Cook that is. Some people like to live in the box, and some outside of the box. Nobody, however, likes to be put into the box. Do we?

And regarding the mess? We men would love to be able to cook without making a mess. The point of cooking, however, is to interact with the food, feel the the ingredients, revel in the stirring and sifting and chopping and dicing and mixing and tossing and smelling and tasting and all the other wonderful activities that constitute joyful food preparation. If the object of an activity is "to not," as in, to not make a mess, then you bring a very negative mindset to the whole effort and really kill the whole spirit of festivity. In an ideal world, the meal that results from our unbridled zeal will be wonderful and splendid and tasty and hearty, and all recipients will so enjoy it that they will gladly join in afterward to clean up the battlefield. In an ideal world. While the chef takes a nap on the couch...

In our house, the wife handles the baking. I can't do it. Baking has too many rules, precise measurements, meticulously orchestrated sequences of events. You have to hold your eyes a certain way and control your breathing and don't shake the stove or cut a fart or do anything else to disrupt the machine-like flow of predictable events. No wonder women are devastated when their souffle falls or cake collapses or filling doesn't set or some other catastrophe results despite all their precise efforts. Trying on bathing suits is tough on self esteem? Spend a day baking! Jeesh! Hell, when our chili is off or the steaks aren't exactly right, we just toss half a beer or a splash of bourbon on it or in it and the other half in us and call it good. Life's too short, people...

And sex? Don't get me started. Okay, so we've already started. Deep breath...

Men and women are different. Okay, there, I said it. And men are to cooking as women are to baking. (That's a junior-high middle school math allusion for those of you thinking it had a slightly familiar ring.) We all approach everything we do from our own self-conscious perspective - its unavoidable, and not necessarily selfish. We men are like a steak or a chicken or a pot of chili or a fresh salad. There's nothing complicated about a man and, from a qualitative standpoint, man sex is pretty simple. For the vast majority of us, the worst sex we ever had wasn't bad, and the very best was about 2.5 times better than the worst. We're just that way - uncomplicated. Toss us on the fire, flip us every once in a while, a dash of this and a dab of that and everything's good.

Women, on the other hand, not so much. Outside of the space shuttle or the CERN particle accelerator, women are just about the most complicated contraptions on the planet. So woman sex is like baking. A lot like baking. Much of the cause of this is that 80 percent of a woman's sex organs are between her ears, the balance distributed equally between the sweet spot which bears no further mention (except to say its complicated as hell too!) and about 72 other spots on her body, the vast majority of which most men don't even know exist. (This complex configuration is, of course, the exact opposite of a man's, which is simple to the point of imbecility - hence requiring virtually no effort to deliver the perfect repast - from the man's point of view.) This marked difference means that, in woman sex, almost all of the sifting and stirring and mixing and seasoning and all of the other things that it takes to pull off the perfect meal (metaphorically speaking) are ideally performed in all sorts of places besides the one or three where most men are inclined to focus their attention. And very, excruciatingly contextually dependent. And ladies, you don't exactly come with instruction manuals or cook books or how-to classes, ya know?

Now, now friends. Don't be depressed or distressed. There is good news for those who've hung around this long. Men can and do in fact learn to cook without making a huge mess, and to clean up after themselves when there is one. We can also learn to bake, and a lucky few may even learn to enjoy it (although I've never personally met any.) And women, you can learn the joy and abandon of cooking spontaneously, tossing in a little of this or that just because it sounds interesting, despite the fact that it's not in the recipe, or maybe getting totally wild and pulling the first ten things you find out of the fridge and pantry and making a meal of it with no recipe at all, because you're not afraid to fail, because there's no such thing as failing. Who needs a recipe anyway, remember? Add a little Tao to our cooking - go with the flow. Enjoy the process and don't be overly hung up on the final result. And for both, start with a clean kitchen and finish with a clean kitchen...

And as far as the sex goes? Just keep trying different recipes, different ingredients, different techniques. Men, work a little harder to be more complicated, sometimes our simplicity makes us seem, well...simple? And remember that women aren't actually trying to be complex, they're just that way. Keep in mind that a positive and giving attitude goes farther than just about anything towards making sure the oven is at the right temperature, the ingredients are properly mixed, and the meal will be enjoyable to all. Ladies, open up and lighten up and enjoy the experience without trying to make it fit a recipe or agenda or schedule? Remember, who needs a recipe? Again, go with the flow. And don't be shy about directing we poor simple men through your complexities. Remember, most men really do want to be, metaphorically speaking, great cooks or bakers.

Finally, I would encourage everyone remember two simple maxims. First, nobody has a good time if one party is trying to bake while the other is trying to cook, at least in the conventional kitchen. Not enough cooking implements, room, counter space, etc. If you try it, you'll likely have a poorly prepared meal and too much angst for anyone to consider either the cooking or dining experience enjoyable. And secondly, a meal is not complete until everyone has been served and filled to their individual satisfaction. So, with that...

Bon Appétit!

Author's Note - This is a blog, not a magazine. If I ever do outside research, it is unlikely that you'll know. If I ever cite specific facts or figures, they will be properly attributed. Ergo, it is safe to assume that whatever you read here is fully and completely the product of my twisted little mind. Hope you enjoy!

Think About It...

2010-01-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

Happy 2010, friends. My first post of the new year/decade and I've been frankly conflicted on where to start. Coming out of a ho-hum holiday and driving to Houston tomorrow for some client visits and not really positive whether I want to get frighteningly serious about grabbing my job by the balls and making it my bitch, or getting more serious about exploring other opportunities, including dedicating myself more to writing. I can safely say that there isn't a single aspect of my life right now that is firmly anchored, stable or predictable - I'm fine with that, but it requires that I be awake, alert, and mindful at all times. And it would no doubt help if I settled down and did some serious meditating, a practice I've honored in the past primarily by artfully dodging...

I guess I'd best start the year by explaining what it is I wish for this blog, in hopes that at least a few of you will be inclined to help out. Obviously, it is a journal of sorts, and in that sense intended to be therapeutic for me. And, God knows, I can use all the therapy I can get. I have always loved to write, but have never been one to write for myself. I'm not much impressed by my writing (even less by my spelling, grammar, etc.), but enjoy sharing my thoughts with others and having others occasionally tell me that they appreciate my efforts. So I guess a bit of affirmation is an underlying objective.

More critically, if a post has the effect of making even one reader think more deeply about a topic, or perhaps consider something for the first time or from a new perspective, I will feel truly blessed. I like to think, and I like hanging out with people who think, and who like to think. That's really what we're about here - thinking. As my formal education is so lacking, I fully expect to be exposed to new and formalized perspectives on myriad topics to which I've never been exposed nor thought to consider. Hopefully some of you will find your intellectual portfolio enhanced as well - likely not every week, but often enough that you'll keep coming back for more.

And I really would rather have my readers share an honest well articulated disagreement with some proffered stance or viewpoint, than to have my derriere kissed by a bunch of wonderful well-meaning folks who want to make me feel good about myself. The yin and yang of my Taoist philosophy dictates that there will be balance regardless of anyone's efforts, and my preference is that you, my dear readers, feel at least as free to wail away at my over-size ego as you are to cast praise. There is no progress in any aspect of life that is free of discomfort. I'm a big boy. I can take it...

In seeking both topic ideas and feedback from diverse viewpoints, I am adopting the same approach that insightful senior missionaries share with their students, namely that the best way to refine and strengthen your message is to share it with non-believers, understand and acknowledge their feedback and viewpoints, and defend or modify your position accordingly. Not that I have any strident messages I'm trying to sell here, or at least I hope stridency isn't seen as a hallmark, but I find that we learn very little when we limit our conversations to topics without nuance, with which everyone is comfortable, or to groups which all share our weltanschauung. I would go one step further and argue that topics we are cautioned against discussing in public are exactly the topics we should discuss, and so have every intention of violating this cautionary maxim and discussing politics and religion, economics and philosophy, sexuality and relationships and so forth, and hopefully doing so in a way that encourages dialogue between myself and my readers, and between readers yourselves. With respect and civility, of course...

Back in the days when I ran for public office, we were required to give speeches. I hated giving speeches. I loved, however, having discussions, and whenever the format allowed, I would do just that - giving a brief introductory bio on me and who I was and why I was running for whatever post I was seeking, and almost immediately opening it up to questions. This was particularly enjoyable when I spoke to groups of students, whether high school or college, but with adult and professional groups as well. I would start by stating my position on whatever the topic at hand was (as I will do here), offering a rationale or justification, and then fielding questions and challenges. It made for a lively dialogue that forced me to see other viewpoints, broaden my perspective, and either defend my position when I was right, or adjust it when I was not. At the end of the day, the point wasn't winning the discussion, but learning and teaching, sharing and growing.

So, in closing my first and hopefully most boring post of 2010, a few thoughts I'd like you to take away:

Please let me know what you think about any post, positive or negative. Your doing so is helpful to me in more ways than I can count, and hopefully will act a spur to further discussion.
Please feel free to pitch, either through comments or email, any topic you would like us to get into. I do not want this to be a monologue, but a dialogue and as lively a one as we can muster.
Please invite your friends and fellow travelers to join us. We welcome anyone of any persuasion with a bright mind, an open outlook, and a reasonably civil disposition.
I ask that any invective be reserved for me personally, and that discussion between readers be kept on a civil plane. I don't ask or expect all to agree, lest the dialogue have a narcoleptic effect that is useful to nobody. I do, however, expect civility, as should we all.

Thanks for spending a few minutes with me. Until next week...

Conflict or Resolution?

2009-12-27T09:08:00.000-08:00

(c) All of the above...

As this should be my last post of 2009, we are at that time where traditionally we assemble our resolutions for the upcoming year. This year, however, I am a little conflicted. Err...ok, a lot conflicted. Let me 'splain...

As mentioned before, I am charting a new spiritual life path that owes more to Taoism than anything else. Taoism is virtually impossible to explain, but can be best understood as alignment with universal nature and understanding/acceptance of the inconsequential self. Ambition doesn't much play a role, for it suggests working to take more from life than life readily offers, which in the doing generates turbulence, or conflict. When we make specific resolutions or plans, in the western sense, we are predestined to not live fully in the moment, which puts us in direct opposition to the Tao or path.

We all know that modern planning models require achievability, measurability, a time frame, milestones, etc, as though an infinite universe and our chaotic human experience can be fit neatly into a scientific model. I resolved earlier this year to not fall prey to these sorts of entrapments, so am limiting my 2010 resolutions to approaches rather than objective-based exercises. My hope is that as I review my progress this time next year, I'll find I've adopted life resolutions that have served me well and require little modification going forward.

I will strive to be as honest as possible, with myself and with all others with whom I interact.
I will seek to be empathetic with others and compassionate toward the suffering of all living beings I encounter.
I will work to become closer to nature, to live a life as in balance as possible with nature, and to make intensive interaction with nature a focal point of my life.
I will strive to honor the limited time granted to me in mortal existence by making a conscious effort to eliminate from my life all activities and accouterments that do not add real value to my existence or to that of others around me.
I will make a conscious effort the be happy, enjoy life, and to share my joy and happiness with others.
I will struggle against the overwhelming temptation to offer solutions to others' problems, particularly when my help is not requested.
I will continuously work to enhance my spiritual, mental and physical health by studying, meditating, exercising, eating healthily, and maintaining my sobriety.
I will work diligently to fully incorporate the Four Noble Truths, The Eightfold Path, and The Twelve Steps into my daily regimen, until they become an ingrained part of my nature.

Ok, I can already hear what you're saying. "Wow, that's some heavy shit!" Well, duh! Number 4 is basically saying, "Don't waste time," which I would be doing if I were adopting meaningless (to me) initiatives that had no value to others or myself, or which I had no intention of keeping. Please note that none of these are exactly measurable, and each I think has a sort of never-ending quality to it that negates the need for periodic upgrades. I think...

A quick dissertation on the challenges of each, and why I include them:

I, like every addict, have spent my life a chronic liar. Fortunately for others, the majority (but not all) of my lies have been to myself. I am in no way unique in this respect, but through introspection and counseling I've come to realize that lying is a conditioned pathology that we get better at with practice, and it is a direct impediment to relationships with self, with others and with nature. "To thine own self be true," will be a good maxim to start with...
I have a strong tendency to be frankly uncharitable towards individuals, while purportedly compassionate toward groups - like, say...mankind? I've traditionally explained this away by describing myself as "a forest person," rather than a "tree person." While this works organizationally, in one's daily life it is a cop-out, at least for me. I need to open myself up to others and to their individual suffering, which means trusting others, which I apparently have issues with. It will be an interesting challenge and perhaps my toughest.
The nature thing is a big one, and tied pretty directly to my Taoist sentiments. I am daily more convinced that the angst of modernity is directly attributable to our disconnect from nature, which has been both the objective and result of western culture. Again, I can only say and act on what applies to me, but I believe that getting back as close to nature as possible will be the wellspring of spiritual peace and mental health that I have been unconsciously seeking for a long while. The wife fears my going all Jeremiah Johnson, and I won't deny the appeal. My intent, however, is to bring as much of nature into my life as is reasonably possible, and to discard as much of "civilization" as is responsibly discardable, then evaluate the result and see how it feels and works.
As stated above, simply "Don't waste time." I have long held a sense of my own mortality and the temporal and temporary nature of human existence much more strongly than most folks I know. This is in no way distressing to me, but rather motivates me to extract as much as possible from every moment of living. Unfortunately, this sentiment has been honored only conceptually to this point. I now intend to actualize it.
I am a bleak dreary bastard for the most part, or am seen to be by many who know me, and I've decided this simply isn't acceptable. My lack of expressed joy has been, for the most part, due to my allowing life to live me, rather than vice-versa. I intend henceforth to live life fully and completely, and believe the resultant joy will evidence itself to those around me with no significant effort on my part. I fully expect this to be the simplest commitment I'm making to myself this upcoming year and all that follow.
This one I've already started on, and its a toughie. Being the problem solver is an ingrained part of my nature, and is also a classic co-dependent behavior. Suffice to say that I have plenty of my own problems to solve, a massive ego to subdue, and an undeveloped sense of humility that needs plenty of nurturing. Hopefully what you see in my blog will be the sum total of my unsolicited problem solving tips, which are, when offered, not what I suggest will work for you, but only what have, at least in some instances, worked for me.
Get serious about my program and quit dancing around it.
Ibid.

Not exciting this week, sorry. For you. For me, it has been pretty cathartic, and I would say has set a bit of an attitudinal benchmark against which to measure myself and my friends who are inclined to measure me over the course of upcoming months and years. As I reread the above I recognize the theme, and am satisfied with the consistency. I am in fact resolving only to make me a better me, rather than changing the world over which I have little control or even effect. Perhaps in so doing, I might add a little more than I take away, and leave existence at least a slight bit better than I found it. I'm not sure how much more than that we can realistically shoot for...

Happy Holiday all! And good-bye and good riddance to 2009!

Bah Humbug!

2009-12-19T15:14:00.000-08:00

Here's hoping everyone is well into the spirit of the season, and that your shopping is all knocked out...

"Modern consumer demand, at the margin, does not originate from within the individual, but is a consequence of production. It has two origins:

Emulation: the desire to keep abreast of, or ahead of one's peer group — demand originating from this motivation is created indirectly by production. Every effort to increase production to satiate want brings with it a general raising of the level of consumption, which itself increases want.
Advertising: the direct influence of advertising and salesmanship create new wants which the consumer did not previously possess. Any student of business has by now come to view marketing as fundamental a business activity as production. Any want that can be significantly moulded by advertising cannot possibly have been strongly felt in the absence of that advertising — advertising is powerless to persuade a man that he is or is not hungry."

From The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith 1958

(Special kudos to all my brilliant Facebook friends who helped me zero in on this quote. Note to self: having smart friends way beats sitting through 4-8 years of exhaustive university education...)

This is an easy year for me to write these thoughts, my income being approximately 60% of 2008's which was approximately 60% of 2007's, which was fortunately a very good year or we'd be standing on a street corner with cardboard signs. I went out and shopped a little today, was gratified that the mall didn't seem disgustingly crowded nor traffic intolerably bad. Some of this feeling on my part might be attributable to my more mellow disposition after more than 6 months of continuous sobriety and extensive therapy, but most I believe is due to the fact that we Americans have been well and truly whacked upside our collective head with a stout cudgel of economic reality, and are in an appropriately defensive posture. Good on us, and about time I say...

Galbraith published this book in 1958, the year my overly fertile mother birthed me as the fourth of what would eventually be five children. It was not uncommon for families to have only one car, while two was a status symbol. Dishwashers and clothes dryers were still tres chic, and women working outside the home were a rarity, at least in my suburban middle class childhood. Also rare were credit cards, charge accounts, frivolous bank loans, low-interest zero down mortgages, and a whole array of devices contrived jointly by marketers and financiers to encourage American consumers into colossal fiscal irresponsibility. And it is from that tree that the cudgel was formed with which we have been whacked and which leaves us woozy and somewhat unwilling to reach for our pocketbooks this festive season. Well, again, good on us I say!

I will have to come back at some other time after I've zeroed in on the source, to share another economic notion of the Eisenhower-Kennedy era, namely that virtually all our society's actual needs had been met, and all that remained to drive increased production, consumer spending, corporate profits, etc, were wants, either real or created by marketers. Hence, we had the advent heyday of Madison Avenue, the onset of the grotesque commercialization of Christmas (and now other holidays as well), and the current AMC hit, Mad Men (which I've never watched, but am considering as treadmill fare as I grow weary of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, Miranda, Big, the screaming baby, et al...)

At my Saturday morning AA meeting, one fellow was sharing his Christmas memories from his childhood spent with his mother and step-father, when times were rough enough that the family members all crafted presents for each other, wrapped them in butcher paper decorated with poster paints, and placed them under the tree. He was smiling when he told the story, and remembering the simple joys of family and sharing and having everything they needed. I remember Christmases like that myself - still regularly use the boot jack my brother made for me in the family workshop more than thirty years ago now...

I don't really have a problem with Christmas as a concept, but what it's become holds no appeal for me, and hasn't in some time. As my children are grown and soon to be on their own, I am glad that they've enjoyed some of the sparse Christmases our conditions have provided, and am pleased that they don't much associate spending and getting with love and sharing. I can't help but think that their attitudes toward Christmas are likely much nearer those that old Saint Nicholas had in mind when he purportedly started all this business a millennium ago.

Speaking of Saint Nicholas, who else out there finds Bill Bennett to be an insufferable pompous ass? Happy Holiday all!

Opening Bell

2009-12-12T06:33:00.000-08:00

So there, I've done it. My sponsor and my therapist and all the self-helpers in the world say I need to journal, get in touch with my thoughts and feelings, put them on paper. Well, here we go then...

I've got to shovel some breakfast pretty quick, get showered up for my Saturday morning meeting, and on with the errands de jour, so will likely wrap up later. I promise that I won't make a habit of mundane posts, but this is my first and I started it myself, so we'll call it my first "public" step on a path I've been traveling semi-privately for some time. And you know they say that every journey begins with the first step. Thanks for being here with me...

You'll note that my url is www.fluxandanchor.blogspot.com, referring to some books by a writer named Jack Chalker (just looked it up) back in the mid 80s. To my recollection I only read one, likely Masters of Flux and Anchor, but don't hold me to it. The gist was that the universe is comprised of the stuff of existence in two broad forms. "Flux" is the unperceived, formless, chaotic stuff of the universe, and "anchor" is the world of matter and energy that we are familiar with, with all its rules and limitations. By having a Zen-like relationship with the whole shebang one could transcend the conventional limitations of time and space. I would like to think that my universal construct derived from something deeper and more fact-based than a mid 80s science fiction series, but at the moment I can't swear to it. I do know that what I just wrote (in terms of the composition, not the transcendence) very accurately describes my deeply held belief on the nature of the universe. Fair warning, then, that from time to time we may wander together into some less traveled realms on our journey...

My original blog title, Another Path, was intended to convey a theme on multiple levels. I myself am on a new personal spiritual path, which I happily share with visitors to these pages and anyone else who cares to tag along. I don't yet have a label for it, and may not. I can say that it is definitely eastern in nature, with hints of Buddhism and Taoism but I'm not certain proximity to either. It is definitively non-western and non-Abrahamic, which is a wee bit of an achievement from one raised and living in what is often referred to as the buckle of the Bible belt. As I chart this new course, it is naturally affecting my personal life, relationships, business, and all the other ick and goo of existence, and I have no idea where any of it will wind up.

On another level, I will be both following and promoting a new path that I strongly feel much of the world is approaching - one which deviates from our current fealty to consumerism, laissez faire capitalism, dark-age religions, nationalism, and disregard for ourselves, our species, our fellow living beings, and our planet. I've been counseled by many to focus on myself and let the rest tend to itself, which is very much a Tao/Zen approach to existence. I do know that I need to be whole and healthy to be of ultimate service to others, but also that our mortal existence is limited in duration and that I've squandered at least half of my most productive years so have ground to make up. Having lived more than half a century now, I have developed a tiny bit of the patience so lacking in my tender years, but not so much that I feel comfortable sitting by calmly as the world consumes itself under the guidance of myopic self-serving megalomaniacs, if you know what I mean...

If you haven't noticed, I'm an abuser of ellipses - absolutely love them. Sorry, but its my blog and I can if I want to. I can think of no better literary convention to express the fact that a thought is unfinished. Most of mine are. Some intentionally...

So, to wrap up my first entry, visitors can expect to encounter musings on politics and geo-politics, science, religion and spirituality, relationships, addiction and recovery, and occasionally sex or cooking. If you catch me getting into a rut, please put a boot up my ass and get me out of it. I will do my best to stay away from pop culture, of which I know very little, and music or art, of which I know even less. Anything else is fair game. It will take me a few entries to figure out the formatting, achieve a coherent style, and develop a level of competency in composition and presentation, so I hope you will bear with me and that the metamorphosis isn't too grotesque to observe. I hope to not bore you too much, and will welcome your commentary and guidance. I am sharing this growing experience with you in hopes that your company will help me grow, and that perhaps from time to time you'll take something away that makes your life a little bit richer.